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ATTILA 


AND HIS CONQUERORS 

A STORY OF THE DAYS OF 

ST. PATRICK AND ST. LEO THE GREAT. 


BY 


MRS.\RUNDLE 


CHARLES, 


AUTHOR OF 

“chronicles of the schonberg-cotta family," “ against the stream, 
“three martyrs of the nineteenth century,” etc. 


PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE TRACT COMMITTEE. 



SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, 

London : Northumberland Avenue, w.c. ; 

43, queen victoria street, E.C. 

New York; E. & J. B. YOUNG & CO. 



HISTORICAL SOURCES. 


NOTE. 

In this, as in all the historical fictions I have 
written, all words or deeds attributed to historical 
persons are, as far a^-.J^-could ascertain, strictly 
historical. 

The chief authorities for the history in this story 
are, the Latin Sermons and Epistles of St. Leo in 
the Acta Sanctorum^ the writings of St. Patrick, 
Hodgkin’s Italy and her Invaders^ Lhistoire d'A ttila, 
by Amadee Thierry, Milman’s Latin Christianity^ 
Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, The Life of St, Leo, by 
Canon Gore, and his article on St. Leo in Smitlis 
Dictionary of Christian Biography, Canon Bright’s 
Translations of St, Leds Sermons, and various 
other authorities on Liturgies and ecclesiastical 
customs, usually deemed trustworthy. 



CONTENTS. 


CHAP. 

I. 

IN THE WHITE ROBES OF BAPTISM 

• • • 

PAGE 

9 

II. 

THE HOUSE ON THE AVENTINE ... 

• • • 

20 

III. 

YOUNG IN AN OLD WORLD 

... 

30 

IV. 

A LETTER FROM ST. PATRICK TO 

BROTHERS AND SONS 

HIS 

38 

V. 

ONCE MORE THROUGH WRECK TO ROME ... 

49 

VI. 

“ MOVING ABOUT IN WORLDS NOT REALIZED ” 

61 

VII. 

TOURS AND HER SAINT ... 

• • • 

71 

VIII. 

FROM ROME TO THE BATTLE-FIELD. 

• • • 

79 

IX. 

ORLEANS — HER SAINT AND HER SIEGE 

... 

92 

X. 

TROYES— HER SAINT AND HER SALVATION 

108 

XI. 

A FIELD OF - SLAUGHTER, AND A FOUNTAIN 

OF YOUTH ... 

123 

XII. 

ST. PATRICK’S CHILDREN IN ST. LEO’S 

CITY 

133 

XIII. 

SUNSET MEETING DAWN ... 

• • • 

144 

XIV. 

ROME AND HER SAINT ... 

• • • 

157 

XV. 

RANSOMS AND CAPTIVITIES 

... 

169 

XVI. 

BELEAGUERED AQUILEIA... 

... 

186 

XVII. 

A RETREAT WITH ST. LEO THROUGH LENT 



AND EASTER 


195 


viii CONTENTS. 

CHAP. PAGE 

XVIII. THE FALL OF AQUILEIA ... ... ... 207 

XIX. LEO AND ATTILA — THE RESCUE OF ROME 213 
XX. AMONG THE HUNS— LEO AND ATTILA ... 220 
XXL ON THE SABINE HILLS ... ... ... 228 

XXII. A MEETING OF THE WATERS ... ... 236 

XXIII. FULFILMENTS AND DREAMS ON THE SABINE 

HILLS ... ... ... ... 240 

XXIV. THE LAND OF THE MORNING ... ... 251 

XXV. CHAOS AND CREATION IN CHRISTENDOM ... 260 

XXVI. “the hold of every foul spirit,” “i 

SIT A queen” ... ... ... 268 

XXVII. LEO AND THE VANDALS ... ... ... 277 

XXVIII. A TREASURE LOST AND A SOUL FOUND ... 286 

XXIX. ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS ... ... 294 



ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


CHAPTER 1. 


IN THE WHITE ROBES OF BAPTISM. 

HEY sat together on a crag close to 
their home, the young brother and 
sister, Baithene and Ethne, only son 
and daughter of a chieftain of the great 
clan O’Neill. Prince and princess they might 
have been called in legendary story, and their 
father and mother king and queen. For there 
were many kings in Ireland in those early centuries, 
as afterwards many saints. And yet neither of, 
these great titles, though counted by the score, were 
unmeaning. The saints were men and women 
vowed and consecrated to a holy life of devotion 
and service : — a true aristocracy in the Church. 
Homage was rendered them because nobleness 
was expected of them. And the kings were 
distinguished as really, in the minds of their people 
and clan, from all beneath them, as men of another 




lo 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


stamp and metal from the rest, with a royal 
superscription. To serve them was honour ; to 
obey them was imperative necessity and sacred 
duty; to live for them was life worth living; to 
die for them was death worth dying. Conan, king 
or chief of one branch of the O’Neills, father of 
Baithene and Ethne, and his wife, however poor 
their palace and small their kingdom, were served 
and honoured with a free, unquestioning loyalty 
altogether unknown in the servile, mercenary 
courts of their contemporary sovereigns in the 
palaces of Constantinople or Ravenna. 

Therefore these children — for they were scarcely 
more, the boy seventeen, the maiden sixteen — had 
been surrounded from infancy with an atmosphere 
of loving homage. Their home, outside which 
they sat, overlooking the sea, was not much better 
than a settler’s lodge, built of mud and timber, 
with rough unhewn stones ; yet it was essentially 
a palace, for those who dwelt in it were acknow- 
ledged to be royal. Outside, on the hill below, 
some of the clansmen guarded it night and day, 
and no stranger could enter unchallenged ; it was 
the hall of feasting, the gathering-place for battle, 
the seat of judgment for the people. Except the 
brother and sister, and the guard watching on the 
hillside, out of sight at that moment, every one 
was asleep. For it was late ; the sun had set an 
hour or two, the moon was making her long path 
of silvery light on the waves below, and the youth 
and maiden sat together in the soft evening air 
clad in the sacred white robes, Ethne still with the 
white veil on her head. For this had been a great 


IN THE WHITE ROBES OF BAPTISM. 


II 


day for them. There had been a Christian baptism 
on the hill of Tara, a few miles away, and in the 
well on the hillside the brother and sister, with 
their mother, had been baptized by the great 
missionary Patrick into the Christian name ; and 
also, at the same time, numbers of their people, 
among them many of the Druids and bards, the 
priests and poets of their race. Their father had 
been present, but could not himself yet enter that 
solemn gate. He had too many wars on hand ; too 
many clan wrongs that could not forego vengeance ; 
too many enemies whom he was not quite clear he 
could include in the great peace which the Christ 
was said to bring. He was too sure of the rough 
work that might have to be done outside that 
gate of baptism, too doubtful of the kind of world 
he might find within, to venture yet to enter. 
But the message the Gallo-Roman bishop brought 
seemed so great, and from Powers so great, the 
story of compassion and sacrifice so beautiful, and 
his wife had adopted it with such joy, that he 
could not refuse that she and the children should 
enter a world that seemed so fair. 

The mother had remained at Tara, with her 
husband and the chieftains, for the night ; and 
the children were alone in the house, under the 
charge of the old nurse, with the rest of the 
household. 

‘‘ I felt the bishop’s hands rest on my head,” 
said Baithene, in a low tone, ‘‘and his deep voice 
went through me. The words were Latin, but I 
think I understood most of them. We belong to 
the Father ; He is the God of all men, of heaven 


12 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

and earth, of the sea and of the rivers, of the high 
mountains and the lowly valleys ; above heaven, 
and in heaven, and under heaven. We are His 
children. And we belong to the Son. He is the 
King of all men. He died for us all. And we 
are His soldiers, and His clansmen, of His flesh 
and blood. And we belong to the Spirit. He is 
within our hearts, and will teach us and give us 
strength to be good children of the Father, and 
good soldiers of the Son, the Heavenly King. 
And this whole land of ours is only a little bit of 
His great kingdom. And this whole world of ours 
is only one of the halls of His great world. But it 
is worth while to be the son and daughter of an 
earthly king, for we may lead our whole people 
to the Heavenly King. Wonderful things have to 
be done, Ethne. Ireland has to be won for Him. 
The world has to be won for Him.” 

Is not the world His already ? ” said the maiden. 

Beyond that sea are they not all Christians 
Our Patrick was made a Christian there, like the 
rest, before he was taken captive and brought to 
our land to be a slave, that he might make our 
country free ; just as the great Christ came to this 
world to suffer and to die like a slave, to set the 
world free. Beyond the sea are the Britains, where 
Patrick’s father lived. And beyond the Britains 
is Rome, the great Christian Empire of the world, 
and the great wonderful Christian city. We have 
been outside this Kingdom of God ; but now we 
have come into it.” 

“But if the Britons on the other side of the sea 
(whose coasts we can see sometimes from ours) are 


IN THE WHITE ROBES OF BAPTISM. 1 3 

Christians, why did they not tell us the glad tidings 
before ? ” said Baithene. 

‘‘ Perhaps they tried, and could not make us 
listen/' said Ethne. People do not seem always 
to attend at first ; father does not quite listen yet." 

“ He is the chief. The rights and the wrongs of 
the clan are his, and he must not pass them by," 
said Baithene. 

Must we not forgive ? " said the girl. “ Patrick 
forgave, and went first to those who had wronged 
him most and held him in bondage. And they 
tell us that the Christ when He rose went first to 
those who had murdered Him, the people of the 
Jews." 

“We must forgive our own wrongs, I suppose," 
said Baithene, “ but perhaps not other people's 
wrongs. At least not kings. Kings have to set 
the wrongs right. And there is the great blood- 
feud with the other branch of the O'Neills who 
killed our grandfather." 

“ It does not seem so very hard to forgive the 
people who killed our grandfather," said Ethne. 
“For one thing, they must be dead. And how 
long have we to go on not forgiving their grand- 
children, who did not kill our grandfather ? " 

‘‘ I cannot tell," said Baithene, meditatively. “ We 
have a great deal to learn ; we must ask Patrick. 
We must learn more Latin, and read the Testa- 
ments of God." ~ 

There was a pause. The sound of the waves 
on the sands far below came up in soft pulses to 
them, and, nearer, the rush of the little river falling 
from rock to rock through the glen beside them. 


14 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


‘‘ We will ask mother first/' resumed Ethne. 
“ She looked like one of those beautiful creatures, 
the angels, when she rose up out of the waters. 
Her eyes shone as if with light within, and she did 
not seem to need wings to take her straight up to 
the sky. And when they folded her in the white 
robes, no one need have asked us, as they say the 
two princesses of our race asked Patrick, ' Has 
the King of Heaven daughters ? ' so heavenly she 
looked and so queenly. She seemed shining all 
through with love, the love which seems the light 
of heaven ! Perhaps that love is the secret of 
forgiveness and of everything.” 

‘‘Yet,” replied Baithene, “love is of many kinds, 
and has many ways. There is the love of the 
sheep who are cared for, and the love of the 
shepherd who guards the sheep, and the love of 
the faithful dogs who help the shepherd to fight 
the wolf. #Perhaps the love of the king has 
sometimes to be of the fighting kind.” 

At that moment the great Irish deer-hound at 
Ethne's feet gave a low, suspicious growl. 

“ Quiet, Bran,” said Baithene ; “ it is only a rustle 
among the trees in the glen.” 

“ Do you ever feel,” he resumed, “ a great longing 
to go and see that great world beyond the seas, 
where the great cities are, and above all Rome, with 
her palaces, her armies, and her Emperor, and the 
great temples.^ There is so much to see and to 
hear ! ” 

“No,” said Ethne, “I never want to wander 
from home, and the dear people who love us so 
dearly, who would give their lives for us.” 


IN THE WHITE ROBES OF BAPTISM. 1 5 

As she spoke the old nurse came out with. two 
large woollen plaids, and wrapped the girl round 
and round in their warm folds from head to foot, 
laying the other over the shoulders of Baithene, 
who crossed it around him. 

“The mother would have you come in soon, I 
think,” she said. 

“ Soon — in an instant ! ” they answered. “ But 
there will never be another day quite like, this in all 
our lives, and we want to live it to the end.” 

And when the old nurse had left, Ethne said — 

“ Every bit of the world seems so close to the 
heavenly King, why should I wish to be anywhere 
but where we are ; where all our beloved are ; where 
our father and mother have the homage of all ; 
where all would die for us ; where all would follow 
us in life and death ; where a word from our lips is 
law, and a wish of our hearts is understood and 
obeyed before we can speak it ? ” 

“ It is /or these^ it is just because of their love, 
I sometimes wish to go afar and learn,” replied 
Baithene. “ The world seems so wide and so wise 
there beyond — I want to bring back treasures, such 
as Patrick himself has brought to our Ireland.” 

Ethne looked . up in his face with a tender 
anxiety. 

“Would you leave us, brother beloved?” said 
she. 

“Only to enrich you all, darling,” he said, “to 
win back treasures for all.” 

“ But it is you we want,” said Ethne, “not any- 
thing you could bring. What could you bring 
to us to make up for the loss of what you are to 


1 6 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

US ? And how could you learn to serve our people 
as well as by being with them always from boyhood 
to grey hairs ? ’’ 

He smiled. 

‘‘ Then you never wish to see the world beyond ? 

Why should I ? Above all, now that we have 
found the gate into the great world beyond and 
above, and have learned that the Light of all the 
world is with us everywhere.” 

And in a low sweet voice she began to chant 
Patrick's Irish hymn — 

“ Christ beside me, Christ before me ; 

Christ behind me, Christ within me ; 

Christ beneath me, Christ above me ; 

Christ on my right hand, Christ on my left.” 

Again the deer-hound gave a growl, but this 
time louder, and followed by a short anxious bark. 
There was again a soft rustle among the trees, in 
the glen below them, but it ceased, and there was 
silence again, and Ethne threw her arm round the 
dog, and said — 

‘‘ Hush, Bran darling ; you must no longer be a 
suspicious heathen dog. Quiet ! " 

He lay down again with his head on her knee, 
licking her hand in response to her caress, yet still 
with ears pricked up, and an occasional anxious 
quiver through his whole frame. 

The brother and sister turned from the glen and 
looked again towards the sea. The moon had 
gone behind a cloud, and only a fitful gleam came 
now and then over the waves. In a low, sweet 
voice Ethne began again to chant Patrick's Irish 
hymn — 


IN THE WHITE ROBES OF BAPTISM. 


17 


“ I bind to myself to-day, 

The Power of God to guide me ; 

The Might of God to uphold me ; 

The Wisdom of God to teach me ; 

The Eye of God to watch over me ; 

The Ear of God to hear me ; 

The Word of God to give me speech ; 

The Hand of God to protect me ; 

The Way of God to prevent me ; 

The Shield of God to shelter me. ; 

The Hosts of God to defend me — 

Against the snares of demons ; 

Against the temptations of vices ; 

Against every man who meditates injury to me, 
Whether far or near, 

With few or with many.” 

The words had scarcely left her lips, when 
through the dark, with the suddenness and the 
silence of lightning, which the thunder does not 
precede to warn, but follows, to increase its terror, 
a band of armed men came on them from the glen 
behind, folded their plaids around both brother and 
sister, and with the practised skill of professional 
pirates, muffled their faces so that not a cry 
could escape ; then bound their limbs with ropes, 
and swept them away helpless as branches of 
felled trees. Bran, the dog, made indeed all 
the noise he could, flew at the throat of one 
of the band, barked and yelled savagely. One of 
them tried to drive him away with a club, and 
another was on the point of cleaving his skull 
with a battle-axe, when the leader stopped him, 
saying — 

“ Let the brute be, he is worth more than either 
of them ; I sold one such once in Rome for well- 
nigh his weight in gold.’^ 

“What is your gold to me, if the brute gets at 

B 


1 8 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

my throat ? ’’ was the angry answer ; ‘‘he has bitten 
my leg to the bone already.” 

“ What matters a scratch in your leg ? you are 
no babe to cry for a little blood-letting. Let the 
brute be. They are faithful to death. Keep hold 
of his master, and the beast will follow.” 

“A bad catch altogether,” muttered the man. 
“ These are two more of these new Christians ; I 
saw the white robes of baptism underneath the 
plaids, and I heard the Sacred Name on the girl’s 
lips,” and he crossed himself in fear. 

“ What is that to thee or me } ” exclaimed the 
leader. “What are these Roman Christians to us ? 
Did they not leave us to the heathen Saxons ? ” 

All this Ethne and Baithene heard and partly 
understood, the language being akin to their own, 
as they were dragged and carried helplessly down 
together to the little creek below, where the British 
pirate vessel was drawn up on the shingle. There 
they were lifted into the flat-bottomed boat, and 
laid bound and gagged and half-stifled at the 
bottom. Bran swam after them, jumped into the 
boat, and lay down at their feet. 

When they had rowed out of reach and hearing 
of the shore the ropes were slackened, and the 
folds of the plaid around their faces were loosened. 
They could not stir, but they could look at each 
other ; and as the night wore on, and the sails 
were set, and some of the crew fell asleep, and 
others were busy with the steering and rigging, 
Ethne whispered, with the tears she could no 
longer keep back, nor raise her hands to wipe away, 
streaming down her cheeks — 


IN THE WHITE ROBES OF BAPTISM. 


i9 


‘‘ Brother, I am coming with thee to the lands 
beyond. It will all be well ; we are not forgotten.'^ 

But Baithene could only murmur in his anguish, 

“ It is my fault, all mine — the punishment of my 
restless discontent.” 

“ It was no restless discontent, it was the instinct 
in the s.wallows when they have to fly south,” she 
said. “ We will learn our lessons and come home 
to rest.” 

And softly smiling through her tears, she crooned 
the words of the Irish hymn — 

“ Christ in the chariot ; 

Christ in the ship ; 

and then in her broken Latin the conclusion — 

“ Domini est salus, 

Christi est salus, 

Salus tua, Domine, 

Sit semper nobiscum.” 

But Baithene could only heave one long sob. 

“Darling,” she said,/‘I think it will be all right 
for us all. We will learn Latin together, and come 
back together to the home.” She tried to add, “ to 
our father and mother,” but the dear names seemed 
to choke her, and were lost in tears. 




CHAPTER II. 

THE HOUSE ON THE AVENTINE. 

HAT same night in Rome, the great 
city of wonders of which Baithene, the 
young Irish chieftain, had dreamt, and 
to which he was being swept in the 
irresistible tide which still swayed the world thither- 
ward, the same moon which had shone on the 
brother and sister on the Irish shore and lighted 
the pirates to their capture, looked down in all her 
southern lustre on a mother and daughter watch- 
ing in one of the palaces on the Aventine for the 
return of the father and son from a great banquet. 

They were in an open colonnade looking on the 
garden, the perfume of violets and roses breathing 
around them. The mother was reclining on a 
couch cushioned and draped with Oriental silks. 
At her feet, her head resting against her mother's 
hand, sat the young daughter Lucia. The mother 
was a Sicilian Greek, tracing her descent in a 
double line from the early Spartan and Athenian 
colonists. In both faces could be seen the fine 
curves and lines of the early Greek art. But while 



THE HOUSE ON THE AVENTINE. 


21 


the mother’s face was calm as a statue, touched 
with a sweet gravity and sadness, the girl’s was 
full of brilliant life, dark eyes flashing, pearly teeth 
glistening, bright colour coming and going — 
the whole countenance continually changing with 
every shade of thought and feeling. The mother 
would have had her called after a saint, and her 
father, Fabricius, a patrician of the ancient Anician 
house, would have had her named after one of the 
ancient heroines of his people ; so by way of com- 
promise they had given her the name of Lucia, 
combining the memory of the Sicilian saint with the 
perilous eyes, and all images and visions of illumined 
and luminous creatures in earth and heaven. 

‘‘When will this banquet at our old kinsman’s 
be over ? ” said the girl. “ Mother, some of the 
maidens, my young cousins, younger than I, have 
seen so many things, I feel like an infant beside 
them. When will you take me to some of these 
great festivities ? Our kinsman Petronius Maxi- 
mus is such a great and virtuous man, they say, 
as well as a patrician and a senator, and to-night 
the Imperial Court are to be there, and perhaps the 
beautiful Empress Eudoxia.” 

“ My child would not leave me } ” said Daman's, 
the mother. 

“No, that thou knowest well; but I would go 
with you, if it were only once, if not to the Circen- 
sian games, or the theatre, at least to this house of 
our kinsman. His wife, moreover, is so grave and 
sweet ; we love her. And he is such an upholder 
of everything orderly and proper. They say he 
rules his time by his clypsedra, the water-clock, 


22 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


and lets nothing overstep its right moment — 
pleasure, and study, and work, and sleep, and 
banquets. Father says he is like an ancient 
Roman cut in miniature on a gem, and you would 
not think it dangerous to dine with an ancient 
Roman, like Scipio Africanus, or Fabius Maximus, 
or Numa Pompilius, however dull it might be!'’ 
she added, laughing. 

“They were heathens, the ancient Romans,” 
replied the mother, driven to bay. 

“I know,” replied Lucia; “and that is another 
reason for its being preferable to going to dine 
with our cousin Petronius Maximus. He is 7iot a 
heathen ; and, moreover, Marius said the Emperor 
Valentinian would probably be there.” 

The mother shuddered visibly. 

“That is no reason for any good maiden or 
matron being there,” she said. “ God forbid that 
we should risk our pearl amidst the wickedness of 
the court of Ravenna.” 

“They would not be wicked to us,” replied the 
girl, with a scornful curl of the beautiful lips. 
“We are of the Anician house, no new family like 
these Byzantines 1 ” 

“We have seen too many of the ancient Roman 
names on the roll of the slaves,” replied Daman's. 
“ It is scarcely forty years since from the ruins of 
this palace, where our noble kinswoman Marcella 
lived, and where the holy women of the Ecclesia 
Domestica came and listened to Jerome, she was 
borne, bruised and beggared, to die in one of the 
basilicas, during the siege and sack of Alaric the 
Goth.” 


THE HOUSE ON THE AVENTINE. 


23 


''But, mother, all that is ancient history now. 
Alaric has been lying forty years in the bed of the 
river they turned aside to make his tomb. And 
this old Rome of ours, which he sacked and tried 
to ruin, lives on.” 

" Lives ? — yes ! ” was the mournful answer. 
"Rome is still living, still dying.” 

"But, mother,” resumed the maiden, after a 
pause, "the world is always dying, the sermons 
say; yet the children are always being born into 
it, and we are the children now, and have to live.” 

" There is another city,” said the mother, tenderly 
stroking the dark tresses as they fell unbound on 
her arm, " the City of God, always dying from 
earth, but ever living.” 

"You are thinking of Saint Augustine’s great 
book,” said Lucia; "you have heard Augustine’s 
own voice .^” 

"Once at Hippo, once at Ostia, where his 
mother, the blessed Monica, died in such joy. 
Augustine died, you know, at Hippo, ten years 
since, amongst his flock, during the siege of the 
Vandals.” 

"Augustine could not save his Hippo from the 
Vandals,” said Lucia ; " then /le could scarcely 
have died with great joy, when he had so m^ny of 
his flock to leave in misery.” 

" He died in faith,” said Damaris gravely, "find- 
ing comfort in taking his place among the lowest, 
repeating the penitential psalms.” 

"They must be very terrible, those Vandals,” 
resumed Lucia. " I am glad it was the Goths and 
not the Vandals that sacked our Rome ; they 


24 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


would have left little behind. And, moreover, the 
Vandals are Arians, which makes them know how 
to distinguish and persecute the Catholic Christians 
better than the heathen can. Mother, is the 
Emperor Valentinian, who is so far from being 
good, a Catholic ? '' 

He supports the Catholics. He listens to our 
Bishop Leo, like his Aunt Pulcheria, Empress of 
the East.” 

“ It seems almost a pity a wicked emperor 
should be a Catholic,” said Lucia meditatively. 
“ It seems so much easier to understand when the 
people who do wrong think wrong too.” 

There was a pause, then the mother said — 

‘‘There have been great voices in the Church, 
not so long ago : Athanasius of Alexandria, firm 
against the world ; John of Antioch and Con- 
stantinople, the Golden-mouthed ; and our old 
lion Jerome, so rude to feminine affectations, so 
suspicious of feminine wiles, so reverent and tender 
to true womanhood — Jerome, who spoke in this 
our palace, who gave us the Bible in the vulgar 
tongue — in Latin every one can read. But they 
are all silent now — Athanasius for seventy years, 
Chrysostom more than forty, Jerome thirty, 
Augustine only ten — great voices. And three of 
them, Athanasius, Augustine, and Jerome, were 
heard in the streets, in the palaces, in the basilicas 
of our Rome.” 

“ It must have been easier and better to live 
forty or fifty years ago,” said the maiden ; “but we 
cannot help having to live now,” she added, look- 
ing up suddenly into her mother’s eyes. “ Mother, 


THE HOUSE ON THE AVENTINE. 2 $ 

did Athanasius, and Chrysostom, and Augustine, 
and Jerome think their own times so very good to 
live in ? Were they pleased v/ith the men and 
women around them ? It scarcely seems so from 
the bits I have heard father read from Augustine’s 
Citf of God, or Jerome’s letters to our relations, 
the good women of the Aventine of old. But are 
there no great voices now ? ” 

Damaris thought a little, and then she said 
humbly and softly — 

‘‘There is our own Leo, thank God. God forbid 
we should be among those who only recognize the 
saints when we have to build their sepulchres.” 

Lucia knelt down beside her mother’s couch. 

“ Father says Bishop Leo is a real Roman, not 
in miniature,” she said ; “and Marius says, though 
a priest, he is worth all the generals and consuls 
and prefects together. Oh, mother, it is good to 
hear of some one strong and good in these days.” 

“ Let us say our Leo’s prayer,” said Damaris 
softly : “ ‘ Give us the spirit to think and do always 
such things as be rightful, that we who cannot do 
anything that is good without Thee, may by Thee 
be enabled to live according to Thy Will.’” 

As they sat together silent afterwards, sounds 
came from the neighbouring hijl, the Coelian, and 
along the quays by the TibeA below, of chariot- 
wheels, and broken strains of songs and laughter, 
with tumultuous voices, as of a crowd of revellers 
dispersing hither and thither. In a few minutes 
one of those waves of sound broke against their 
own palace. Dogs barked welcomes from within ; 
there was a rush of slaves to meet the cominer 

o 


26 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


cavalcade, and soon the father and brother came 
into the porch, and greeted the mother and 
Lucia. 

‘'A magnificent banquet,*' said Fabricius, ‘‘our 
cousin Petronius Maximus excelled himself. Gold 
and silver and gems, wines from every coast, viands 
from every land, troops of slaves robed like Oriental 
satraps ; songs in every language, mimes, actors, 
dancing-girls ; and yet everything irreproachably 
virtuous and respectable.” 

“ Also," interposed Marius, “an oration in clever 
imitation of classical Latin, from a young man 
from the provinces, Sidonius Apollinaris ; ” and 
with a little of the superciliousness of the Imperial 
Metropolis he added, “ This young noble told me 
he numbered among his intimates poets equal to 
Homer, Plato, and Euripides, to say nothing of 
Virgil and Horace." 

“ What did he speak about in his oration ? " 
asked Lucia. 

“ What did he 7iot speak about ? ” was the reply. 
“Gods and goddesses, nymphs and heroes, sun- 
gods, earth-gods, gods under the earth, all bring- 
ing wreaths, gems, stars, anything, everything, to 
the feet of the greatest of all, Valentinian the 
Third, Emperor of the West, lord of all hearts 
and hearths." 

“ Is he then a pagan } " 

“ A pagan ! — by no means. Pagans, genuine 
pagans, bring offerings to their gods and goddesses 
— don’t bring their gods and goddesses to pay 
tribute to Caesar." 

“Aetius was there also,” said Fabricius, “the 


THE HOUSE ON THE AVENTINE. 2/ 

Count of Italy, the great general who has been 
defending the Empire/’ 

“ What did he say ?” asked Daman’s. 

Fabricius replied — 

He said to me softly as we came away, that it 
was just as well Attila the Hun should not be 
present at such a banquet.” 

‘‘What has Attila to do with it ” asked 
Lucia. 

He has hundreds of thousands of savages at 
his command,” replied her father. ‘‘And Honoria, 
the Emperor’s sister, has sent him a betrothal ring, 
requesting him to come and marry her, to set her 
free from the tyranny of her imperial relations, 
and to accept as her dowry half the Empire. And 
Attila accepts the proposal, and promises to come 
with his hundreds of thousands of savages as a 
bridal train, to lay Italy waste on his way, and 
probably throw the plunder of Rome in as a bridal 
gift.” 

“ It is some farce Petronius Maximus got up for 
your amusement you are telling us df, not a fact!” 
said Darnaris. 

“ The Emperor may think it all a farce,” said 
Fabricius, “but scarcely the General Aetius, the 
Count of Italy.” 

“ What is the General Aetius proposing to do ? ” 

“ To go back to Gaul, and keep Attila there if 
he can,” replied Fabricius, “and to play his old 
game of setting the barbarians against each other. 
But the barbarians seem to have learnt the game, 
and not to enjoy it, so that it becomes more and 
more difficult to win. It almost seems as if the 


28 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


Romans would have to learn to fight their own 
battles again themselves/' 

‘‘Father," said Marius, “let me be one such 
Roman. Let me go to the provinces and fight 
these savages back ! The Goths, they say, were 
civilized citizens compared with these Huns." 

“With whom would you go?'' said Fabricius. 
“ With your young friend Sidonius Apollinaris, his 
Platos and Homers, his classical Latin and his 
elegant villas ? " 

“ No ; with Aetius, to the battle-field, wherever 
that may be." 

“The battle-field is everywhere, perhaps at its 
hardest here at the heart of the corruption," 
Fabricius said, laying his hand on the young man’s 
shoulder, yet with evident pride in his proposal. 
“ Did we not see a portion of it as we came home 
to-night ? " 

“ Where ? What ? " said Lucia. 

“ We were delayed in passing one of the 
basilicas," said Fabricius; “there was a midnight 
service — we are still, you remember, in the octave 
of Easter. A procession of priests was coming 
out, and some of the troops of revellers around us 
were excited with wine, and there were rough 
jests, when the Bishop Leo himself appe,ared, and 
the noisiest revellers shrank away ashamed, and 
all was quiet." 

“ Indeed, every one bows before Bishop Leo," 
Marius said. 

“Yes," said Fabricius; “since the time of his 
election, when, during his absence on a mission of 
peace-making in Gaul, our impatient, restless Rome 


THE HOUSE ON THE AVENTINE. 29 

waited forty days tranquilly for his return, every 
one knows who is the true shepherd and ruler of 
Rome.” 

His battle-field is the oratory and the basilica,” 
said Damaris softly, ‘‘ and therefore his presence 
brings peace to the world and to the city.” 

Marius' face lighted up, and he exclaimed — 

^‘Then if Bishop Leo counselled that the post 
on the battle-field for me was on the frontier, face 
to face with the Huns, you would be content that 
I should go } ” 

“ I must go to Bishop Leo's own secret battle- 
field myself,'' she said, before I can answer thee.” 



CHAPTER III. 

YOUNG IN AN OLD WORLD. 

HERE was little sleep for Damaris that 
night. The sun was just beginning to 
gild the palaces on the Aventine, and 
the sounds of labour had scarcely- 
begun to stir on the busy quays of the Tiber below, 
when the mother rose and went to what she had 
called the battle-field of Leo, the secret place of 
prayer, which for her was usually the half-ruined 
oratory in the palace, where once had arisen the 
prayers and praises of Jerome and Marcella, and 
the Ecclesia Domestica. 

“ Thou knowest,'' she prayed, O All-seeing, how 
I have asked that he might be kept from tempta- 
tion, the temptations of this corrupt city. If 
this is Thy way of escape, from the seductions of 
the city to the battle-field of the nations, among 
the perils of the frontier, let him go ! Better the 
spears and arrows of the barbarians than the fangs 
of the serpents around us here, the malaria of the 
seven hills, the festering cancer of this wicked court, 
at the heart of the Empire, poisoning the very 

f 



YOUNG IN AN OLD WORLD. 


31 


springs of life ! If this is Thy way of escape for 
him, O Father of all the fathers and mothers of 
the world, not for a moment would I hold him 
back. Take him for Thy hard warfare! Only 
show him when and how ! ” 

As she came back through the wilderness of 
roses which led to the house, there was a wonderful 
lightness in her step, and brightness in her eyes. 

Lucia was watching her from the porch, and ran 
to meet her. 

“ Hast thou been taking counsel of the bishop 
already ? she said. 

“ No, not of Leo,’’ replied Damaris ; ‘‘ why should 
I trouble Leo, who has the care on him of all the 
Churches.^ Thou rememberest the words of Leo 
himself — ‘The whole people of His adoption is 
royal and sacerdotal ; we have the ceaseless pro- 
pitiation of the omnipotent and perfect Priest ; and 
although He has committed the care of His sheep 
to many pastors, He Himself, nevertheless, has 
not abandoned the custody of His beloved flock.’ 
So, by the counsel of our own wise shepherd, I 
:went as one of the countless flock to the Chief 
Shepherd of all.” 

“ The Shepherd who cares even for the little 
wilful kid,” whispered Lucia, “as thou hast so 
often shown us in the picture in the catacombs ; 
and He has heard thee and made thee glad, and 
has given thee what thou hast asked ? ” 

“ Heard me and made me glad indeed,” said the 
mother ; “ but scarcely given me what I could 
have dared to ask or to wish, though with all my 
soul I will it if He wills it.” 


f 


32 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


About our Marius, mother ? ’’ 

The mother bowed in acquiescence, and said in 
a low voice — 

I think, dearest, we may have to let him go.” 

‘‘To the frontiers, among the barbarians, the 
Huns ! But they say all the other barbarians 
were angels compared with these, who seem half 
wild beast and half witch.” 

“ There are no half beasts in our Christian 
creed,” said the mother ; “ only creatures once 
‘very good,' made in the- image of God, now 
fallen angels and fallen men, and none fallen 
below the depths of the Redeeming Cross. The 
roots of the Tree of Life are deeper than the roots 
of any poison tree.” 

“But, mother, Marius would be going not to 
redeem the Huns, but to hunt and slay them ; not 
as a shepherd or a priest, but as a soldier, would 
he not ? ” 

“ That is true,” Damaris replied ; “ but even the 
shepherd has sometimes to slay the lion and the 
bear.” 

“ But it is our own Marius,” exclaimed Lucia, 
passionately escaping from allegory ; “ he will go 
to lead our Roman soldiers, some of them, father 
says, so feebly armed, so effeminate, that they 
have thrown off the old armour, the heavy helmets 
and shields, preferring to run the risk on the battle- 
field rather than to bear the weight on the march, 
and therefore when the battle comes, often taking 
refuge in cowardly flight. And against him will 
be those fierce, nimble Huns, or the tall athletic 
Goths, who don't mind being killed, father says, if 


YOUNG IN AN OLD WORLD. 


33 


they can only kill enough of the enemy first. And 
the enemy will be our Marius, who will never run 
away, and will be among those ill-armed cowards 
who will take to flight and let him stay and die ! 

Damans’ eyes flashed. 

‘‘Who knows,” she said, “but that our Marius 
will inspire his Romans with the old Roman 
courage, so that they will stay by him, and 7iot die, 
but conquer; or, if they die, die conquering at their 
post ? ” 

Lucia embraced her mother amidst her tears. 

“ Ah, miother,” she said, “ did not some of your 
old Greek forefathers descend from the three 
hundred who died at Thermopylae ? ” 

“It was said so amongst us,” Damaris replied. 
“And certainly your father’s house belonged to 
those old Romans who drove Hannibal back to 
Carthage.” 

“ Ah, mother,” said Lucia, “ perhaps after all it 
is best our Marius should go to fight the Huns.” 

They had reached the porch, and as Lucia 
spoke the last words, Marius, who had come 
silently up to them and heard what she said, 
looked with a radiant smile into his mother’s eyes. 

“ Then, mother,” he said, “ I shall not have to 
fight for this purpose of my life with thee ? And, 
with thy blessing, the Huns are easy foes.” 

She laid her hand on his, and the compact 
between them was sealed. 

Lucia glided away, and left the mother and son 
together. There was never need of many words 
between these two. Her faith in God, her un- 
quenchable hope for mankind through the Incar- 

c 


34 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

nate Lord and Son of Man, had always been the 
atmosphere around his inmost life. To her, Chris- 
tianity was the revelation of beauty as well as of 
truth ; the law of life by which all things grow 
fair as well as strong ; and of all beauty, beauty of 
character and soul the fairest of all. And a word 
from her to him, her son and heir in character 
and soul, was always a glimpse into the world 
of light within her soul, which he knew so well. 
Nevertheless he knew and she knew, that for him 
the disorders and miseries and sins of the world 
around had sometimes eaten deep into his power 
of believing in the presence of the Omnipotent 
Love above and beneath all. He had often felt 
dimly, and now she recognized consciously for him, 
that to realize the Love which conquers he needed 
to be in the army of the Conqueror, to be fighting 
not merely with the doubts within or the countless 
subtle heresies around, but with the concrete sin 
and misery, wrong and disorder of this visible, 
tangible world. The blood of the old Roman 
rulers of themselves and of the world, conquerors 
and law-givers, was in him, as well as the subtle 
perception of the old Greeks. She felt she had to 
let him go forth to the great world-battle ; and 
knowing this, she would have him go forth, not 
weakened by her tears, but crowned by her smile 
and her blessing. And so he went. 

There was little difficulty in finding an appoint- 
ment for Marius when his purpose was understood. 
The difficulty amongst the luxurious court and 
intriguing officials, whose principle was to do as 
little and get as much as possible, was to under- 


YOUNG IN AN OLD WORLD,. 35 

stand how any one who might have had an easy, 
splendid life at home could wish to rush into peril 
and toil at the tumultuous frontiers of the Empire. 
A post was therefore easily obtained in connection 
with the forces of Aetius, and the day soon 
arrived when Marius had to set off for Gaul. His 
last day at home was Sunday. They began it in 
the early morning in the basilica of Saint Agnes, 
by the catacombs outside the walls. 

Damaris delighted on special occasions to cele- 
brate the Passion near the resting-places of the 
early martyrs. The subterraneous galleries and 
chapels among the tombs were familiar to Marius 
and Lucia from childhood ; the frescoes of the Good 
Shepherd, the Orpheus building up the Holy City 
by his Divine music, the inscriptions of immortal 
Peace and Hope were interwoven with every 
sacred memory of their lives. Among the names of 
the martyrs were not a few of their own kindred 
in the past. 

The brother and sister walked home among the 
vineyards and gardens, and the vividness of the 
sunshine struck them with a sharp contrast as they 
came out from the subterranean chill and shadow. 
The pulses of youth beat .high in them both, and 
everything was intensified by the thought of the 
change and parting so near. 

It was one of those moments in life like those 
which sometimes at sunset deepen every colour, 
and concentrate the broken lights and shadows 
into the unity of a picture. A new meaning 
seemed to come into the most common things, and* 
a new unity and significance into their own lives. 


36 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

What an inheritance we have had Marius said, 
as they looked up to the hills, at the temples still 
standing on the Capitol, at the palaces still com- 
plete and splendid on the Palatine, at the quays 
still full of busy life on the Tiber. What it is to 
have the familiar pictures of our childhood, those 
monuments of the greatness of old Rome, of the 
beauty of Greece ! ’’ 

'' And ozir Rome and our Greece!’’ said Lucia ; 
“ to have lisped the language the old Romans 
spoke, Cicero and Virgil, and the old Greeks, 
Homer and Plato, in our infancy ; to have two 
such mother-tongues 1 We ought to be very wise, 
Marius I ” 

‘‘To have listened to the very words Paul spoke, 
and Peter, and John the beloved,” said Marius, 
“ from such a mother’s lips 1 We ought to be very 
good, Lucia 1 ” 

There was a pause. Then Lucia resumed — 

“ Brother, I sometimes feel such a hypocrite 
beside mother. She is always trying to guard 
me with her dear, delicate hands from the great 
wickedness of the world ; she thinks I know 
nothing of the wickedness of the world, of this 
wicked Rome. And,” she continued, hesitating, 
“sometimes I feel as if she were an innocent babe 
beside me, whom I ought to guard I I feel so 
dreadfully wise as to the wickedness of the world, 
so old beside mother.” 

He looked down admiringly and protectively on 
the pure sweet face, the downcast eyelids, the long 
lashes shading the round, rosy cheeks. 

“ You are certainly terribly experienced in the 


YOUNG IN AN OLD WORLD. 


37 


ways of the world ! ” he said. “ I suppose our 
mother will always be as young as the angels. 
But I think the world itself is so very old just now, 
that we who belong to this generation are born old, 
and the older people who belonged to nobler and 
better times are young with the youth of that 
younger world.’’ 

How can we help it she said. ‘‘This miser- 
able world of slaves from every race that lives close 
to us, and cheats and lies and talks wicked talk ! 
No dull, ignorant boors, but clever, keen-witted 
Greeks and Syrians ! How can we help learning 
evil from them } what can we do to become young 
again ? ” 

“ I am going among the young nations, my 
beloved,” he replied, “ who are pouring in on our 
old Rome.” 

“ To fight them back !” she said. 

“ Perhaps also to learn from them,” he replied. 
“ When I come back, z/ I come back, I will tell 
you what I have learned. Perhaps I shall find the 
Fountain of Youth, and drink of it, and come back 
young ! And if I do, I will be sure to bring a cup 
of its precious waters for thee.” 




CHAPTER IV. 

A LETTER FROM ST. PATRICK TO HIS BROTHERS 
AND SONS. 

HEN the pirates had seized Ethne and 
Baithene, one sharp cry had rung 
through the glen from the faithful 
clansman who had been watching 
below, when a javelin hurled by one of the pirates 
had pierced his breast, and silenced him for ever. 
That cry, though unable to reach Ethne and 
Baithene, muffled as they were in their plaids, had 
alarmed the household. But, so sudden had been 
the attack, and so swiftly was the vessel rowed out 
of the creek, that she was well out at sea before a 
boat could be launched in pursuit. There were 
nothing but small river coracles at hand, and the 
British vessel soon distanced them, and was hope- 
lessly lost sight of. 

Even when they reached the opposite shore of 
the Irish Sea, the pirates still seemed in fear of 
pursuit, and hugged the shore by day, hiding in 
creeks, stowing their captives in caves and hollows 
pf the rocks, and then sailing on by moonlight till 



ST. PATRICK’S LETTER. 


39 


they reached the southernmost coasts of Britain. 
At last they came to a creek with which they 
seemed familiar, carefully steering the vessel 
through narrow channels between the rocks into a 
little sandy cove. This cove was shut in by cliffs 
hollowed at one end into a wonderful series of lofty 
caverns leading one to another like halls of some 
palace of the sea-gods. 

The sailors had not been rough with the young* 
captives, partly because they were valuable pro- 
perty, partly because their own hearts were not 
destitute of pity. One especially, called Dewi, 
had shown them no little kindness (the same who 
had crossed himself in half-sympathetic, half-super- 
stitious fear of risking the divine displeasure by 
kidnapping baptized Christians), and missed no op- 
portunity of ministering to their comfort. Moreover, 
there was in Ethne a heavenly gentleness, and in 
Baithene an unconquerable good-nature and readi- 
ness to help, that won on the rough sailors in spite 
of themselves. Once, moreover, Dewi had been 
greatly moved, when he had all but lost his balance 
in shifting a sail, and Baithene had sprung up from 
the bottom of the boat, fettered as he was, and had 
saved him by a timely grasp of his clothes. Here 
in the strange halls of this sea-cave, for the first 
time the boy and girl were set free to ramble 
whither they would. The sides of the cove were 
quite precipitous, and the outermost of these 
vaulted palace-chambers opened on another wider 
bay, which could only be reached by a rocky stair- 
case always carefully guarded. So it happened 
that the morning after their arrival the brother 


40 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


and sister were left at liberty to wander along the 
little sandy cove together, to bathe their feet and 
hands in the waves. They were children enough 
to enjoy it, and were watching the morning sun- 
beams dancing on the foaming crests, when in the 
distance a familiar sound fell on their ears. 

‘‘ It is like our own Patrick’s bell ! ” said Ethne. 

They listened in silence. It was certainly a 
bell, and a bell meant Christianity and Christian 
worship. The clear tones came to them softly, 
like the pulsations of a heart that loved them. 

It is calling them to the Eucharist of God ! ” 
Ethne said, with an awed voice. ‘‘There are 
Christians within reach.” 

“ Alas ! are not these robbers Christians ? ” 
exclaimed Baithene. 

“ I suppose the loveliest things always have the 
falsest counterfeits,” said Ethne ; “ but these surely 
must be real Christians, gathered together to adore 
our Christ.” 

And she knelt down on the sands, and almost 
for the first time since their capture burst into a 
passion of tears. Baithene knelt down beside her, 
and tried to soothe and comfort her. But she was 
already comforted. The glow of sacred hopes and 
memories had melted away the icy weight on her 
heart, or she could not have wept. Instinctively 
they were drawn towards the sacred sound, creep- 
ing noiselessly through the rocky halls, till through 
an opening like a little arched window they caught 
a glimpse of the sandy bay on the other side, and 
above it, on a sandy ridge, of a little building of 
rough-hewn stones, scarcely larger than the cabins 


ST. PATRICK'S LETTER. 


41 


near it, but distinguished by a low bell-tower, 
within which their friend the Christian bell was 
slowly swinging. It was a little church, afterwards 
for centuries buried in the sands. 

More surprises awaited them that day. From 
their post at the rocky window they saw a congre- 
gation gather and disperse, and then some of them 
cluster round a man in a long dark robe, like a 
priest or a monk. Most of the congregation dis- 
persed in various directions, but a few followed the 
monk straight across the sands to the cavern where 
they were ; and, to their inexpressible delight, they 
heard from the lips of the strange priest words in 
their own Irish language. The voice drew nearer 
and nearer, and, hidden as they were in a dark 
recess of the cave, they distinctly caught the name 
of their own Patrick. 

Patrick the great bishop has sent me," said 
the voice of the stranger, in the speech so familiar 
to them. I have sought you across Britain, Coro- 
ticLis and his followers, to fulfil my embassy ; and 
at last I have found you, and you shall hear the 
message of the great bishop, the Apostle of the 
Irish." Many of the sailors and armed followers 
of the expedition were gathered around, half awed 
by the solemn tones of the priest, half deriding. 
But they seemed so far spell-bound as to be con- 
strained to listen. The letter was in Latin, which 
the men understood, being Britons, until lately 
under Roman sway, and, to their great satisfaction, 
Ethne and Baithene found they could also grasp 
his meaning well. 

“ ‘ I, Patrick,' " the priest began, reading from the 


42 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


parchment, ‘ a sinner and unlearned, declare that 
I was made bishop in Ireland. I most certainly 
hold that it was from God I received what I am, 
and therefore for the love of God I dwell a pilgrim 
and an exile among a barbarous people. He is 
my witness that I speak the truth. It is not my 
wish to use language so harsh and so severe, but I 
am compelled by zeal for God and the truth of 
Christ, Who stirred me up for the love of my 
neighbours and sons, for whom I have given up 
country and parents, and am ready to give my life 
also, if I am worthy.’ ” 

. “ He calls us his sons !” murmured the captives, 
‘‘ he has given up country and parents for us ! ” 

“ ^ With my own hand I have written these words, 
to be delivered to the soldiers of Coroticus, no 
more my fellow^-citizens, nor the fellow-citizens of 
the Roman saints, but fellow-citizens of demons, 
shedding the blood of innocent Christians, multi- 
tudes of whom I have begotten to God, and con- 
firmed in Christ. Cruel slaughter and massacre 
was committed by them on some neophytes while 
still in their white robes the day after they had 
been anointed with the chrism, while it was yet 
visible on their foreheads.’ ” 

'‘Then there are others captured besides our- 
selves,” groaned Baithene, “ and some slain. Who ? 
Shall we ever know ? ” 

“ ‘ I sent a letter by a holy presbyter whom 
I taught from his infancy, accompanied by other 
clergymen, to entreat they would restore some of 
the baptized captives whom they had taken, but 
they turned them into ridicule. Therefore I know 


ST. PATRICK'S LETTER. 


43 


not for whom I should rather grieve, whether 
for those who were slain, or those whom they 
took captive, or those whom Satan so grievously 
ensnared, and who shall be delivered over like 
himself, to the eternal pains of hell ; for whoso- 
ever committeth sin is the servant of sin, and 
the child of the devil." Wherefore let every one 
who fears God know that these strangers to me and 
to Christ my God, Whose ambassador I am, are 
parricides and fratricides. Wherefore I earnestly 
beseech those who are lowly and humble of heart, 
not to eat or drink with them or receive alms from 
them, until they repent with bitter tears, and make 
satisfaction to God, and set free those servants and 
baptized handmaids of Christ for whom He was 
crucified and died. 

“‘Avarice is a deadly crime. The Most High 
rejects the offerings of the unjust. He who offers 
a sacrifice from the substance of the poor, is like 
one who offers a son as a victim in the sight of his 
father. Do I show a true compassion for that 
nation which formerly took me captive ? I was 
free born ! ' " 

“ Patrick understands captivity ! " murmured 
Baithene. The voice of the priest had been ring- 
ing like a trumpet, now it deepened and softened. 

“ ‘ Therefore 1 will cry aloud with sorrow and 
grief Oh, most goodly, well-beloved brothers and 
sons, whom I have begotten in Christ, what 
shall I do for you ? ' Listen, beloved ! " the 
priest interposed in words of his own, “ if there 
be any of you within hearing, Patrick weeps for 
you as his brothers and sisters and sons, ‘ What 


44 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

shall I do for you } ^ he says. ‘ It is written, “ Weep 
with them that do weep ; and again, ‘‘ If one 
member suffers, all the members suffer with it.’' The 
Church weeps and laments her sons and daughters 
whom the sword of the enemy has not slain, but 
who have been carried away to far-off lands. 
These Christian free- men are sold and reduced to 
slavery. A crime has been committed which is 
horrible and unspeakable. I grieve, my well- 
beloved, for you and for myself. But at the same 
time I rejoice that I have not laboured in vain, 
and that my pilgrimage has not been in vain. 
Thanks be to God, ye, O believers and baptized 
ones, have departed from the world to Paradise. 
I behold you. Ye have begun your journey to 
that region where there shall be no night, nor 
sorrow, nor death any more. Ye therefore shall 
reign with the apostles and martyrs, and shall 
receive an everlasting kingdom.’ ” Then the priest’s 
voice grew stern again. ^ But where shall they 
find themselves who distribute among their de- 
praved followers, baptized women and captive 
orphans, for the sake of a wretched earthly 
kingdom which passes away in a moment like a 
cloud, or like smoke scattered by the wind ? ’ ” Then 
his voice changed once more to a tone of appeal. 
‘‘ ' But oh that God would inspire them, that at some 
time they might return unto Him ! They have 
murdered the brothers of the Lord. But let them 
repent and release the baptized women whom they 
have already taken captive, that so they may be 
worthy to live to God, and be made whole here 
and for eternity.’ ” Then with the invocation of the 


ST. PATRICK’S LETTER. 45 

name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, 
the voice of Patrick’s ambassador ceased. 

An angry murmur rose in the cave, and then 
there were mocking cries, and spears were pointed 
at the priest. No captives were allowed to be 
seen, and at last he turned sorrowfully away. 

,,But the message had reached three hearts that 
were in 'sore need of it. 

Patrick cares for us ! he calls us his brothers 
and sisters. He is our shepherd, our brother, our 
father ! ” said Ethne. 

Patrick also was once a captive and a slave ! ” 
murmured Baithene. 

And Patrick,” Ethne replied, has lived to 
serve and to liberate those who enslaved him, and 
to be their saviour and friend, like his Lord.” 

And before the sun of that Sunday night had 
set, their friend the sailor Dewi contrived to get 
near them, as they strayed with the deer-hound 
along the little inner cove, now reduced by the 
high tide to a narrow strip of sand. 

‘‘ The voice of Patrick has reached one at least 
of those it was meant to reach,” Dewi said, in a 
low, tremulous voice. One of us at least repents 
at last. Never again will Dewi help to rob and 
murder the brothers and sisters of Patrick, and of 
our Lord Christ Children,” he concluded, what 
can I do for you } ” 

What can any one do for us } ” said Baithene, 
despondingly. 

But Ethne took the sailor’s rough hands and 
clasped them in her own. 

“You can do this for us,” she said, “the best 


46 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

service any can render us now. Go back to 
Ireland and tell our people, tell Patrick the bishop, 
we are alive ! And find our father, Conan, chief 
of the O’Neills, and our mother, if they are still 
alive, and tell them about us.” 

“ I will try, lady,” he said. If I fail, you will 
know it was not for want of trying. But the 
country of your kindred is, and ought to be, as a 
den of lions for any of our band.” 

'4 know!” she said. “But I know you would like 
to have something hard and dangerous to do for us.” 

“You know the truth,” said Dewi, with quivering 
lips. “ And if I can, I will come back and hunt 
you out again, and bring news of your own to you.” 

We shall be lonelier and more friendless than 
ever when you are gone,” Ethne said. 

“ They do not want me any further,” Dewi said. 
“Just now I heard them say they have other Irish 
captives in other vessels further south, who are to 
be joined to-morrow. And they have hired new 
sailors who know this coast. For it is a perilous 
coast, beset by rocks and shoals and narrow channels 
between islands full, they say, of savage people.” 

“Where are they taking us Baithene asked. 

“To Gaul, I believe. There are men of our race 
there who speak our language.” 

“ And then ? ” 

“To Rome, they say. To the great Court of the 
Empire and mart of the world. They have a good 
cargo : gold ornaments of great price among the 
Irish plunder, copper and tin from the ancient 
mines in this west country, and a goodly troop of 
captives” 


St. PATRICK'S LETTER. 4/ 

*‘To Rome!’' exclaimed Baithene. ‘‘To the 

great slave-market ! " 

And Dewi could not deny that this was their 
destination. 

The brother and sister slept little that night. 

“ I longed and prayed to go to Rome, sister. 
And some one must have heard me ! Can it be 
the Friend or the Enemy ? For there is an Enemy, 
you know. We renounced him at our baptism, 
and no doubt he will do us all the harm he can. 
And he is strong, they say. It would seem, some- 
times, nearly as strong as God! " 

“ He is weak, they told us!" replied Ethne. “ He 
can only hurt people who give themselves up to 
him and are cowards. And, brother," she added, 
after a long silence, “a beautiful thing has come 
back into my mind. One of the priests (I think it 
was Patrick) was speaking to our mother about 
prayer. He said we must tell all our wants to 
God. But mother said, ‘ How could we dare ? we 
know so little, and we might ask for the wrong 
thing.’ But he told her, God never gives wrong 
things when His children ask for them, any more 
than she would. And then he told her a story 
about a great saint, I think he was called Paul, 
who prayed that he might go to Rome ; and God 
heard him, and he wem^ to Rome, but shipwrecked 
and a prisoner.” 

“ What comfort is there in that melancholy 
story, Ethne ? It is exactly what I am afraid of I" 
Baithene said gloomily. 

“Do you think the great Paul did not know 


48 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

what he was asking, or the good God what He was 
giving i she said. “ Hear the end of my story. 
In his prison in Rome Paul gathered together 
crowds of people who came to listen to him. And 
many of them became Christians. And,” she 
added, after a pause, in the end he died a martyr 
at Rome. And t/ial, you know, is the greatest 
death, they say, that any Christian can die.” 

“ But that Paul wished to go to Rome to do 
good,” said Baithene, “to serve his people and 
God.” 

“And so did you, darling,” she replied; “and 
God has heard.” 

“ I did not exactly wish to be a martyr,” he 
replied, “ at least not quite yet. I do not feel fit 
for it. And I did want to learn Latin, and so many 
things, and to do so many things.” 

“Ah,” she said, “ I suppose we none of us quite 
know when we are fit to be martyrs. And, darling, 
do / want you to be a martyr ? God has many 
good things to let us be besides that. The Church 
would scarcely get on if all her noblest were to be 
martyrs, nor the world either, could it ? ” 

“ Patrick did come back ; and he saved the people 
who might have martyred him, which seems almost 
better in some ways,” Baithene rejoined, more 
cheerfully. 

“ But Patrick forgave first, and L suppose that is 
what we have to do now,” said Ethne. 

“ Is it ? ” replied Baithene, with some hesitation. 
“ That scarcely seems much easier than being a 
martyr.” 



CHAPTER V. 

ONCE MORE THROUGH WRECK TO ROME. 

seemed almost like a second exile to 
Ethne and Baithene when they left the 
lofty caverns of that rocky sea-palace, 
and missed the familiar sound of the 
matin-bell coming across the sands ; and when they 
lost sight of Dewi, their one friend, standing on a 
point of rock and watching the boat as long as it 
could be seen. They had great need of their new 
faith ; and the anchor held, although they took 
their religion differently, according to their 
character. 

For Baithene it was a commission to conquer 
circumstances and so reign over them, king of him- 
self, if of nothing else, like the Stoics, with the 
inspiring addition of the patience being the patience 
of hope, and the conviction that in ruling himself 
he served the King Who ruled the nations and the 
ages. 

For Ethne it was a talisman to redeem and save, 
to save by loving, to redeem by forgiving, like 
Patrick ; a link with every human creature she 

D 



50 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


met, not of thought merely but of life, of kindred, 
through the Divine Christ Who had redeemed all 
mankind and is Himself man. Whatever untruth 
men thought, she felt the truth they did not think 
remained ; whatever evil men did, the evil could be 
turned into good for the sufferers by love and 
faith, and for the wrong-doers by the forgiving 
patience which might win them to repent. 

Therefore, sad and dark as their life might be, it 
could never be empty or unmeaning, because of 
the quenchless hope of this Christian faith, because 
of the life-giving power of the living Christ. Life 
was not a mere tangle of twisted lines, decorative 
or chaotic ; it was a sacred inscription which God 
could read if they could not, for He was writing it ; 
which one day, when they had learned His language, 
they also would be able to read. 

They needed all the comfort they could find, for 
their lives were dark enough, smitten dov/n from 
such a height to such a depth, driven out from 
such a warmth of love into such an icy cold of 
cruelty and injustice, driven out into an unloving 
world at one of its darkest moments. Happily for 
them they had all the gaiety and pleasantness of 
youth and of their race, enabling them to find 
amusement in incongruities even when most un- 
comfortable, and to make things pleasant and easy 
to others by word and deed whenever this was 
possible. Moreover, they had the birthright and 
training of their rank in their own little world. 
Being quick-witted, they learned soon enough that 
it had been a little world ; and that it was quite 
useless, and would bring them nothing but ridicule. 


ONCE MORE THROUGH WRECK TO ROME. 5 1 

to insist on their dignities. Nevertheless the ( 
natural dignity and grace of their station remained, / 
and, not being asserted, made itself felt : a kind of 
royal way of recognizing little services, of avoiding \ 
neglects or hasty words, which they had been used 
to feel might give pain ; a kind of princely in- i 
difference as to slights or rudenesses, which they i 
had been used to think could only spring from 
ignorance or want of breeding; an innate sense of i 
something within themselves that could not be , 
changed by outward changes, which made any 
menial thing they had to do seem not so much a 
degradation as a condescension ; a royal consider- j 
ation for others which fitted well into the high 
humility of their Christian calling. There is a 
good deal of education in the fact of being royal, if . 
the lesson is learnt the right way. 

So it happened, that by the time the rough 
voyage from Cornwall to Armorican Brittany was 
over, the young captives had won the hearts of 
many of the crew, who tried to lighten their 
bondage ; and not a few were sorry to part with 
the brave, bright boy and the fair, sweet maiden ; 
and wjsre moved to a tender, reverent pity when 
they had once more to be fettered and guarded, 
and led away among the file of slaves to the 
market at the port at the mouth of the Loire, 
where the ship was to end her voyage and unlade 
her living merchandise. 

But these two had still each other, and also 
Bran, the great deer-hound, who had established his 
claim to be with them by making it plain he would 
be the death of any one who tried to part them, 


52 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


whilst he was obedient to the slightest touch or 
softest word from them, especially from Ethne, 
whose guardianship he assumed as the representative 
of the whole clan O’Neill. 

It was some solace to the brother and sister to 
hear around them, when they landed, a language, 
resembling their own. But it was a motley 
company which gathered round the little captive 
band, no strange or unwonted sight then in any 
European seaport. ‘‘ Prisoners and captives ’’ 
came into the petitions of every Litany during those 
tumultuous times. Their ransoms were among the 
perpetual claims of the alms-giving of every 
church. “ I was in prison, and ye came unto Me,’’ 
meant much in days when the prisoners were 
often no dangerous criminals or idle vagabonds, 
but innocent children, or high-born youths and 
maidens such as Baithene and Ethne. 

As they stood there, a gazing-stock for the idle 
crowd always loafing about quays and unloading 
vessels, Ethne felt their rude jests and insolent 
staring the worst things they had yet experienced ; 
and there was a wonderful comfort for her in the loyal 
worship in Bran the dog’s eyes, as he nestled his 
great shaggy head against her . knee and looked 
wistfully up into her face. It brought into her eyes 
healing tears, which to his surprise fell on his head, 
and made him lay his paw on her arm with grave, 
sympathetic remonstrance. 

Baithene, on the contrary, faced the crowd, 
feeling every inch a king, in lofty indifference to 
anything the low rabble could look or say ; he had 
never felt so princely, at least as regarded himself. 


ONCE MORE THROUGH WRECK TO ROME. S3 

As he stood thus at bay, two figures, a man and 
a woman, detached themselves from the crowd, two 
faces were directed towards him and his sister 
with absorbing interest. They were of a different 
type to any Baithene had seen before : the man's 
forehead was lofty though somewhat narrow, ^nd 
further contracted by lines which seemed rather 
grooves worn by care than fruitful furrows of 
thought ; the eyes were dark and deep-set, with 
flashes like the flicker of a fire in the depths of a 
cavern; the lips were prominent and expressive; 
the nose was aquiline, yet the whole countenance, 
if in any way eagle-like, was like an eagle's in the 
eager intensity of its penetrating gaze, rather than 
in any look of power and command ; and from time 
to time a pathetic and kindly expression passed 
over his face, especially when he turned toward 
the woman beside him, in response to any word or 
look from her. Her face, though of the same type as 
his, was softened into a refined beauty : the brow 
was in proportion wider ; the eyes, though deep-set, 
were full of a gracious and tender light ; the mouth, 
varying in expression, though not moulded into 
the Greek curves of Cupid's bow, had in its greater 
fullness and longer lines a power and sweetness 
which did not need a smile to make you feel its 
sympathetic response. She made Baithene think 
of his own mother, and of the Mother they had 
learnt to think of as the type of all true maiden- 
hood and motherhood combined. The complexion 
of both was darker than Baithene had seen, with 
a darkness that seemed to belong to the fire of 
more southern suns than he had known ; not the 


54 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


mere fading or dimming as of the fair faces of 
the North, but rich with an original and mellow 
colour of its own. Both had hair black as the 
raven’s wing. Their dress also was slightly differ- 
ent from anything Baithene was accustomed to. 
Round the man’s head were twisted folds of 
coloured linen ; from the woman’s fell a veil of 
creamy white gathered gracefully round her throat 
and shoulders. 

As he looked, the two came forward, and at a 
signal to one of their British captors a conversation 
began which the brother and sister felt was an 
eager bargaining for their purchase. 

The Briton seemed to be insisting on their being 
sold in one lot — maiden, youth, and dog. The 
stranger, on the other hand, seemed to be endeavour- 
ing to separate them, apparently saying, not so 
•much “ It is 7ioiig]itl' as “ I have nought, or at least 
nothing equivalent to the value of the three 
together.” Unpleasant at it was to be thus haggled 
for, Baithene had a sense that the bargaining was 
more diplomatic than sincere. And at last, when 
the two dark-haired foreigners were turning away, 
and the British sailor laid his hands on Baithene 
and the dog to separate them from the maiden, the 
two turned back ; and between the determination 
of the deer-hound and the pitifulness of the woman, 
the bargain was soon completed — Bran having 
expressed his opinion as to parting from Ethne 
in a way the British captor, remembering Dewi 
with “ his leg bitten to the bone,” did not care 
to have repeated ; whilst the dark-eyed woman, 
in a very unbusiness-like way, clasped the hands 


ONCE MORE THROUGH WRECK TO ROME. 5^ 


of both sister and brother appealingly in her 
own. 

So it came about that Ethne, Baithene, and the 
dog were led away from the slave-market by the 
two strangers, the British sailor following to receive 
at their own home the stipulated coins, which the old 
man would not on any account display in public. 

The dwelling of the strangers was in a remote 
corner of the city, with no appearance of wealth 
about it ; and the purchaser seemed to draw the 
coins required reluctantly and with difficulty from 
a very limited store. The purchase, however, was 
duly completed, to the great relief of the captives, 
who might have been less reassured if they had heard 
the last words of the seller, when, after departing, he 
returned and said in a low voice to the buyer, 
“ Only promise me one thing — that you will not eat 
these children ! ” 

“ Eat them ! '' was the indignant retort ; “ we are 
no Tartar savages.” 

“ Nevertheless,” was the sceptical reply, “ I have 
heard a terrible story of some countrymen of yours 
who were driven out of a city in the far east for 
killing and eating a Christian child at some feast 
of theirs. If thou wilt solemnly promise me not 
to eat them,” he added (a spark of conscience 
suddenly flickering up from^ the ashes of his faith), 

I will give thee back a hundredth part of the 
price.” And he held out some coins in his hand. 

The purchaser made a gesture as if he would 
have flung the money in the sailor's face, but the 
habit of his life gained the victory over his patriotic 
indignation. 


56 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


“To reassure thy conscience, dog of a pirate,” he 
said contemptuously, satisfying at once his patriot- 
ism with an Oriental epithet and his ruling passion 
with the coin, “ I promise to deal better with them 
than thou hast, at the worst.” 

So the bargain was effected, and the purchaser 
re-entered his house. He solaced himself, how- 
ever, for the insult by saying suddenly to his 
wife — 

“ A profitable bargain, truly, thou hast made for 
me ! What are we to do with this Gentile boy 
and maiden ^ The lowest Christians will resent 
our owning or selling one of themselves. And, 
moreover,” he added, with unfeigned disgust, 
“ what are we to do with this unclean beast ? It 
would be as safe to have a lion in the house, and 
as pleasant to have one of Samson’s foxes.” 

“These creatures sell for their weight in gold, 
the sailor said, to the nobles of Ravenna or 
Constantinople, for the chase. They are afraid of 
nothing, and will bring down any wild beast, stag, 
or wolf, or bear.” 

“ The Unutterable grant he do not bring us down 
first,” he replied, encountering with much uneasi- 
ness the pricked-back ears and fully-displayed teeth 
of the deer-hound, emphasized as these were by a 
low growl, decidedly trying to the hospitality of 
the master of the house. 

But Ethne’s arm was instantly around the dog 
and her hand on his head ; and the wistful eyes 
looked up to her with a tender recognition of her 
tenderness, though accompanied by an evident 
distrust of her experience of the world. 


ONCE MORE THROUGH WRECK TO ROME. 57 

Of his hostess Bran showed no such disapproval. 
He even suffered her to lay her hand gently on his 
mistress’s shoulder. There was little communication 
possible at first between them, except by such 
touches and looks, the imperfect Latin of the 
captives not being very comprehensible ; whilst the 
language of the strangers, though possessing gut- 
turals, nasals, and lispings not unlike their own, 
had no real resemblance to it. 

The woman soon began to spread a meal for 
them at two separate tables, both carefully laid, 
with basins of water for washing the hands, and a 
towel, and well-prepared though simple food — 
bread and fruit, and wine of the country. 

A sense came over the brother and sister of 
being welcomed once more in a home, and re- 
cognized as human creatures, not mere chattels ; 
and they partook of the simple fare with the 
enjoyment of welcome guests and hungry children. 
There was a lifting up of hands and eyes in 
prayer and benediction before and after the meal. 

When it was finished, the hostess cleared the 
tables, spread them again with food and drink, 
and made everything ready for the night in the 
sleeping-rooms. Then she carefully unpacked 
from the chest a silver candlestick with seven 
branches, and filled the seven lamps with oil, which 
when the sun set she lighted and set on their own 
table, the only decoration of the house. After this 
she sat down and elaborately did nothing, in a way 
which was evidently significant of some rite or 
festivity. Then after a time they stood up, and 
the host said prayers in the strange, deep-sounding 


58 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


language, whilst the captives watched their pro- 
ceedings with much wonder and interest. It 
seemed to Ethne they must have fallen among 
some new variety of Christians. And yet with all 
the compassionate kindness of their hostess, they 
were evidently considered as apart from all these 
religious ceremonials, as well as excluded from 
sitting at the same table, whether as slaves and 
inferiors, or as of another race, or as in some way 
excommunicate, they could not quite determine. 

It was a relief to them both when they were 
allowed to go into a walled orchard at the back 
of the house, where, for the first time since the 
memorable evening in the cave, by the many- 
chambered cavern, before the reading of Patrick's 
letter, they were once more alone together. 

They discussed their mysterious purchasers in 
low tones, but could arrive at no clear conclusion. 
Of one thing, however, they felt more and more 
clear, from what Dewi had told them, from chance 
words that had dropped from the other sailors, 
and the recurrence of the magic name “ Roma," 
as the only intelligible word in the conversation 
of their hosts — they were on their way to Rome. 

They slept the sound sleep of youth on the 
clean straw couches spread for them in one of the 
sleeping-chambers. When they awoke it had long 
been daylight, and their hosts were sitting in the 
eating-room, again elaborately doing nothing, with 
a seriousness which made Ethne and Baithene feel 
the immobility and stillness in some mysterious 
way part of a sacred ritual. Their only occupation 
was the reading aloud of their host from a manu- 


ONCE MORE THROUGH WRECK TO ROME. SQ 


script wrapped in silken covers, with occasional 
responses from their hostess. 

They were courteously bidden to take their 
places at the meal set on their own table. But 
when they had finished they felt they would be 
better out of the way in the orchard, to which they 
gladly retired, enjoying the sunshine and rest. 

Whilst they were there, from within the house 
came frequently the sound of the monotonous 
reading or chanting, in that same strange language, 
with its deep guttural or nasal sounds. 

“Are we not in a Christian country.^*’ said 
Baithene at last ; “'and can this be our sacred day, 
Sunday, the day of our Lord ? ” 

They tried to count back from that day to the 
day when they had heard the bell from the cavern, 
and had seen the Christian congregation gather and 
disperse at the little church on the sandy hill. 
But they could not make the sevens count right. 
They seemed always landed in the last day before 
the sacred first day of the week. 

“ And there are no bells,’’ said Ethne meditatively. 
“Perhaps we are not in a Christian country after 
all.” 

“ There seem to be so many kinds of men and 
races and languages in the world,” replied Bai- 
thene ; “and also,” he added, “so many kinds of 
Christians ; it is very difficult to understand.” 

At eventide there was another ceremonial, which 
seemed to close the day, as the lighting of the 
lamps had begun it. 

The hostess took out of the chest another 
evidently sacred and cherished treasure, a perforated 


6o 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


silver box of sweet, fragrant spices, which they 
smelt, and with this they perfumed the room. The 
sweet aromatic scent reached to where the captives 
were among the fruit-trees. After that the silver 
treasures are again carefully wrapped up and packed 
into the chest with the parchment manuscripts, 
folded in costly, gold-embroidered Oriental silks. 

Then the hostess came and bade the youth and 
maiden inside, and prepared for them an abundant 
and tempting meal, such as it was long since they 
had tasted ; and the host went out into the city. 

Her manner became much more frank and 
cordial when she was alone with her guests. All 
day, whenever they were together, Ethne had 
noticed the soft, dark eyes following her with an 
intense expression of wistful inquiry ; and when 
the old man came back and took Baithene out 
with him, the hostess laid her head on Ethne’s 
shoulder and burst into tears, sobbing out one 
name, “ My Rachel ! my Rachel ! ’’ 

And so it came about, that between broken 
Latin and Irish, and the universal human speech 
of sorrow and pity, through eyes and tender touches 
(how neither of them could ever explain), the two 
women came to understand that one had lost a 
daughter as the other a mother, and that each had 
much need of the other, and both would try, in 
such measure as they could, to comfort one another. 

The dog also understood and accepted the hostess 
as a clanswoman, and was ready to lavish on her 
more attentions of caressing tongue and paws 
than for some reason not comprehended by him 
or by Ethne she felt free to accept. 



CHAPTER VI. 

‘'MOVING ABOUT IN WORLDS NOT REALIZED/’ 

Baitheiie’s surprise and pleasure, he 
found himself, as he followed his pur- 
chaser through the lanes and streets 
of the little Armorican seaport at the 
mouth of the Loire, frequently catching words and 
sounds familiar to him. The people were Celts, 
Bretons, and though their dialect differed from 
that of the O’Neills, he understood enough to know 
what they were talking about. In the course of 
the morning’s walk he was able to be of much use 
to his master by interpreting for him in the bargains 
which he was always endeavouring to make for 
skins, garments, gold and silver vessels and orna- 
ments, or viands for the table, always apparently 
himself on the verge of bankruptcy, yet always 
contriving by some means to secure the best to 
be had. 

Baithene did not enjoy this haggling, and not 
seldom threw in a word in aid of the seller, but 
nevertheless his pleasant face and frank good- 



62 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


humour assisted the old man, so that they became 
quite confidential and friendly. 

In the course of these commercial arrangements 
which absorbed his companion, Baithene became 
gradually aware of a weight of terror and appre- 
hension brooding like a thunder-cloud over the 
town. 

‘‘Let the old fellow have it for what he will,’’ one 
of the sellers grumbled, as he took the coin for a 
splendid purple-bordered mantle which must have 
belonged to some Roman of rank, “ coin is easier 
to carry than raiment, and we are all on the march. 
Who knows how soon these savage Huns will be. 
upon us ! 

“At all events,” muttered another dressed like 
a peasant, “ Roman purple will not be worth any- 
thing much longer here. It is better to be dashed 
about by these wild Huns, than to be ground down 
steadily under the heavy chariot-wheels of the 
Roman tax-gatherers. We, ‘the Bagaudae,’^ the 
mob, as the proud patricians call us, shall have our 
revenge at last.” 

“ What do you say ? ” replied an armed Goth, 
angrily. “ Do you mean that the reports are true 
that the Bagaudse, the rebel peasants, called in the 
Huns .? ” 

“ How do I know ? ” was the reply. “ Eudoxius, 
the good Roman physician, certainly had pity’ on 
our wrongs, and went, it is said, to Attila's camp. 
And Attila is here.” 

^ Bagaudae, the name given to , the peasants who revolted 
against Roman oppression in Gaul, said to be a Celtic word 
meaning crowd or mob. 


‘ MOVING IN WORLDS NOT REALIZED.' 63 

"‘Here!" was the retort; ‘‘scarcely here yet, 
nor likely to be, if Aetius the great General, and 
Theodoric the Ostrogoth, make up their quarrel 
and fight the Huns." 

“ I know little," was the sullen answer ; “ but what 
does it matter to us ? Whoever wins, in all the 
battles we are still the mob, to die and starve, and 
be driven and beaten. One thing, however," he 
concluded, “ we will not do ; we will not fight for 
any of them." 

And the peasant turned away among his com- 
panions. But the merchant was deep in an espe- 
cially keen bit of bargaining, so that Baithene had 
leisure to continue listening to what these Celtic 
peasants of his own race were saying to each other. 
And in all their talk two names were perpetually 
recurring, entirely new to him — “the Huns" and 
“Attila." The Huns were spoken of as a fierce 
horde of savages, to whom all the other barbarians 
were as men to wild beasts ; fierce heathen all of 
them, although more bent on plunder than on 
persecution ; however, they had occasionally proved 
their heathenism by burning alive in a mass those 
who refused to worship their idols. Moreover, they 
were said to be ugly as monkeys, with small, deep- 
set, piercing eyes, wide mouths, and flattened snub 
noses ; short of stature and hunch-backed ; from 
infancy accustomed to be on horseback, till they 
became a kind of monstrous centaurs. In short, 
they were thought by many not to be men at all, 
not descended from Adam, or Odin, but from 
demons and witches. With no houses or homes, 
they were a nation of vagabonds, a horde of 


64 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


warriors, always travelling on horseback or in 
wagons, men, women, and children, making and 
building nothing, only ravaging and destroying. 
This was the multitude which was rushing like a 
sand-storm over all the land. And now this wild 
mob had been organized into a terrible machine of 
destruction in the hands of a king whose name was 
uttered in a terrified whisper, as if he could hear 
everywhere and see every one, as the name of a 
mighty demon, or dark god of the under- world : 
Attila, king of the Huns. 

He had laid waste the Belgic land and Northern 
Gaul, ravaged the fertile fields into a desert, taken 
what food he needed for his hosts, and then de- 
stroyed the rest ; taken what plunder he could 
from the cities, and then massacred the people and 
burned the towns to the ground. From Worms, 
Cologne, Treves, Metz, Cambrai, Rheims, came 
the cry of ruin. The fugitives crowded all the old 
Roman roads, and hid in the forests. And now it 
was rumoured that he was sweeping on to their own 
river, the Loire, and threatening to destroy Orleans. 

It became evident to Baithene that he and Ethne 
were not the only wronged and plundered creatures 
in the world. The whole world seemed a chaos, 
no one safe, no one at rest, none trusting or helping 
another. 

When the merchant’s last bargain was accom- 
plished, Baithene returned to Ethne with a heart 
full of wonder and horror, and yet with a kind of 
sustaining sense of being rather a soldier on a 
universal battle-field than a solitary fugitive, hunted 
homeless through a w'orld of homes. 


'MOVING IN WORLDS NOT REALIZED.’ 65 


There was much to tell Ethne when they were once 
more alone together on their couches of heather and 
hay, in their own little sleeping-chamber. 

“ The heather is sweet/’ said Ethne, always 
finding something pleasant to speak of. ‘‘ It smells 
like our Ireland, like home.” 

''There is no home,” sighed Baithene; "there are 
no homes in the world. It is all a desert, a ruin, a 
wreck.” 

" Patrick’s people always told us we were only 
on a journey here on earth,” Ethne replied. 
" ‘ Pilgrims ’ they called us ; but that must mean 
that we are travelling to a temple, that there is a 
home somewhere.” 

Baithene unfolded to her all his tidings of the 
miseries of the world ; of the exacting Roman tax- 
gatherers ; the oppressed rebel peasants ; of Attila 
and the Huns. "And,” he concluded, "we are to 
be hunted about through it all as the slaves of an 
old miser, who would bargain for a crust with a 
starving beggar in a burning city.” 

But Ethne had seen the world and the old man 
and woman from a very different point of view 
that day, and was full of pity and hope. 

She must have found her Latin vocabulary more 
extensive than she thought, or the hostess must 
have had some secret stock of Celtic, — she had 
lived amongst well-nigh every tribe and kindred 
and nation, and there were Celts, she said, in Asia, 
— for by some means these two had come to a 
marvellous amount of comprehension of each 
other’s histories and characters. 

" He is not only a miser, Baithene,” she replied, 


66 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

in refutation of his dark apprehensions, “he was of 
a princely house like our own, even more ancient 
it would almost seem, if that could be,” she added, 
with a loyal faith in her Irish pedigree ; “ for,” she 
concluded in a low voice, “ I have found out who 
they are. You remember Patrick always called 
the sacred books ‘ the Testaments of God.’ There 
are two Testaments of God. There is the Old, and 
there is the New, which has much better and more 
glorious things in it because it has the Christ. But 
these people belong to the Old, which is also from 
God, and has also certainly excellent things in it ; 
it was this they were reading yesterday in the great 
roll with the black letters. I remember Patrick’s 
people told us that our Lord Christ Himself read 
wonderful things out of it, about healing the broken- 
hearted, and setting at liberty those that were bound. 
Perhaps, brother,” she exclaimed, with a sudden 
flash as of discovery, “ it was that they were read- 
ing ! Certainly my heart was rather broken, and 
she has been very healing to me. His name is 
Eleazar ; her name is Mariam, or Miriam, like the 
very best name of all, the name of the Blessed 
Mother. Perhaps it is the very same,” and her 
voice lowered, “ for they are indeed of a very 
ancient and honourable race ; perhaps, if that were 
possible, more honourable as well as more ancient 
than our own. They are of the very nation and 
people of the Lord Christ Himself.” 

“The people of the Lord Christ crucified Him !” 
replied Baithene, not easily able to believe much 
good of his bargaining host, “and one of them 
betrayed and sold Him.” 


‘ MOVING IN WORLDS NOT REALIZED.’ 6/ 

Patrick said it was the Romans who crucified 
Him,” said Ethne. 

“ Perhaps,” he replied ; but His own people sold 
Him to the Romans, that they might crucify Him, 
which was baser still, and just what this Eleazar 
might have done — sold Him for thirty pieces of 
silver. I can fancy now how Judas counted them 
out, and rang them on the floor to, be sure it was 
good money.” 

Ah, but, Baithene,” she said, I know much 
more about Eleazar. He did not always love 
money best. They had one dear little girl ; 
Miriam says I remind her of the child. Her eyes 
were dark, but she says, though mine are grey, they 
look at her with a look just like her Rachel’s. She 
was very young when she was taken from them, 
only twelve years old.” 

‘‘ But what has that to do with Eleazar’s love 
of money ? ” asked Baithene. “ If their only child 
is dead, what is the good of money to these 
two ” 

“ That is the point of the whole,” replied Ethne. 

Rachel is not dead. That is to say, they are quite 
sure she is not dead, they have prayed so much for 
her, that they may meet her again on earth. And 
Miriam has had visions and dreams of seeing her, 
has felt the child’s kiss on her lips, and been waked 
by it more than once. There was a massacre of 
their people at some city far away in Asia, and 
Rachel was torn from them and sold into bondage, 
like ourselves, brother. And they are always travel- 
ling all over the world to try and find her. And 
they are quite sure they will one day, and it is this 


68 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


that makes Miriam so kind to captive maidens, 
especially to me.’' 

“ But why, after all, does this make Eleazar so 
fond of money ? ” said Baithene. 

“ Oh, don’t you see ? he is always heaping it up 
for his Rachel ; that when they find her they may 
ransom her at any price, and give her dainties and 
clothes and jewels, and every good thing in the 
world, to make up to her for all she must have 
suffered.” 

“ Poor dear people ! ” said Baithene, touched to 
pity at last. “But what a dream and a delusion ! 
how can they ever find her in this great wilderness 
of a world } or how would they know her if they 
did, after all these years, or she them ? And, 
besides, what possible use could all this money be 
to her, or to any one in the midst uf all this ruin, 
and wreck, and battle } The more possessions the 
more peril. If the Huns knew of all the treasure, 
they would be sure to torture Eleazar and Miriam 
till they gave it up, and then to kill them lest they 
should bargain any of it back again.” 

“ I know,” replied Ethne gravely, “ and so does 
Miriam, but it would be cruel to undeceive the old 
man. This money-grubbing and money-heaping 
is his one link to life and love. It is country to 
him, and home, and child, and hope.” 

Baithene sighed and smiled. 

“ Little sister,” he exclaimed tenderly, “ I believe 
you would find an excuse for Judas and his thirty 
pieces of silver ! ” 

She crossed herself. 

“ There is always the Blessed Lord’s excuse for 


‘MOVING IN WORLDS NOT REALIZED.’ 69 

every one,” she said ; “ they know not what they do. 
Perhaps even Judas did not quite.” 

Certainly this poor, mad Eleazar does not,” 
Baithene replied, with a kind of grim pity, “and 
you need not fear that I shall try to open his eyes, 
or to open any one’s eyes to his possessing the 
treasure.” 

“ It is hidden away very safely, Miriam says ; 
not even she knows where. Most of it probably 
in Rome, or some safe place, away from the Huns, 
where we are going.” 

“/s* Rome safe from the Huns.^” he said 
doubtfully. 

“I do not know about the Huns,” she replied, 
“that is all so new. The Goths and the Celts 
seem to be leaving Rome alone just now.” 

There was a pause. They were becoming 
sleepy. But before they settled to , slumber 
Baithene said — 

“Do they know anything of the other Testa- 
ment of God } Do they believe in Christ our 
Lord.?” 

“I am afraid not,” she replied sorrowfully, “ at 
all events not Eleazar. You see, it was the 
Christians who robbed him of his child.” 

“But Miriam .?” he asked. 

“When I spoke to her of Him,” Ethne replied, 
“she said He seemed to have been very good, not 
like most Christians. She did even say hesitatingly 
and timidly, looking round as if she were afraid 
her husband might hear, that she sometimes 
wished their people could have understood how 
good He was, and what He was, in time ; it might. 


70 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


she thought, have made everything different ; but 
now it seemed too late for them.’^ 

“It is never too late, in this life, at least. You 
remember Patrick says so in that letter we heard 
in the cave ; not even for apostate Christians, he 
said ; not even for Coroticus and those wicked 
pirates, who slew or kidnapped Patrick’s newly- 
baptized sons and daughters, and us among 
them.” 

“ Let us say the Lord’s Prayer together,” said 
Ethne, “and try to put Coroticus and Eleazar and 
their trespasses into it, with all the rest.” 

They rose and knelt hand in hand, and prayed, 
and then lay down again and fell asleep. 




CHAPTER VIL 

TOURS AND HER SAINT. 

N a few days, at early dawn, the journeys 
of Baithene and Ethne began again. 

Eleazar hired a boat, and they went 
up the Loire to the city of Tours, 
where they landed. 

This was the first city the captives had ever 
seen, and it impressed them greatly ; the high 
walls, the tall houses, the villas of the Roman 
officials and rich citizens, in which it was set as if 
in a cluster of gems. They wondered how much 
more magnificent the great Rome itself could be. 
They were still among people of their own race, 
and language not quite unfamiliar was around 
them ; but being on the south side of the river, in 
the kingdom of Theodoric, the Visigoth, the town 
had escaped the ravages of the other Gothic tribes, 
and also, now, of the Huns in northern and eastern 
Gaul. There, also for the first time, they saw a 
cathedral, the only sacred building they had yet 
beheld having been the round cell of hewn stones 
in Ireland, and the little chapel with the bell-tower 
on the sandy shore in Cornwall. 



72 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

It was Friday evening when they arrived, and 
again the ritual of the Jewish Sabbath began in 
Eleazar’s home with the lighting of the seven- 
branched candlestick, and ended with the fragrance 
of the spices from the silver box, and the reading 
from the Hebrew manuscript. This Miriam had 
explained to Ethne. It was a thanksgiving to 
God for creating all sweet and pleasant things, 
a consecration of beauty, and a diffusion, sym- 
bolically, of the fragrance of the rest and worship of 
the Sabbath through the week. The words of the 
thanksgiving were, “ Blessed art Thou, O Lord our 
God, King of the universe, who createst diverse 
kinds of spice, and all sweet and pleasant things.'’ 

The next day Miriam and Eleazar remained at 
home, and the brother and sister were suffered to 
go together round the city. It was understood 
they were prisoners on parole ; that day, therefore, 
was a memorable holiday to them. 

Their first expedition was to the cathedral. It 
was still early morning when they entered. The 
loftiness of the vaulted roof, the vastness of the 
dimly-lighted spaces, the lights at the altar, the 
rich dresses of the officiating priests, the sweet and 
solemn singing of the choir, struck them with such 
awe and wonder, that they did not venture more 
than a few steps beyond the porch. Then, seeing 
the font, they felt that this at least belonged to 
them ; that there they had the children's right to 
stay ; and they knelt down close beside it, and 
reverently crossing themselves, lifted up their 
hearts in prayer. 

It was an early Mass, and when it was finished, 


TOURS AND HER SAINT. 73 

and the congregation dispersed, the youth and 
maiden still knelt on beside the font. 

In one of the chapels there was a tomb which 
seemed to receive much honour. Many of the 
worshippers paused beside it as they went out, and 
knelt there a few minutes in prayer. But when 
the last of the people had left, and the acolytes 
had finished their last services at the altar, and 
the brother and sister were left alone, they still 
lingered on. It felt more homelike to them than 
any place they had been in since they were swept 
away from their own Irish shores. It was indeed 
to them the Father’s house ; and it was delightful 
to them to be together there for a while, quite 
alone. Ethne felt as if their mother might' step 
in at any moment, with the radiant look she had 
on her face when she rose from the baptismal 
waters at Tara. 

At last an aged monk came in, and went straight 
up to the tomb where so many had knelt. After 
a time they went up and knelt beside him. When 
he arose he looked kindly at them, and spoke to 
them in Latin, to which they responded as best 
they could. He evidently perceived at once that 
they were foreigners, and tried them with two or 
three languages ; but they only shook their heads 
in perplexity, until, to their unspeakable delight, 
he said a few words in some Celtic tongue re- 
sembling their own, enough for them to understand 
and answer. 

“You are from the Britanniae,” he said. “I 
have been there with the holy bishops Germanus 
of Auxerre and Lupus of Troyes, to combat the 


74 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


Pelagian heresy; and with some anxiety he asked, 
‘‘ You are not Pelagians 

They had never heard of the Pelagian heresy, 
which was at all events negatively satisfactory. 
But when he asked them from which of the seven 
provinces of Britain they came, he found they did 
not know anything about the seven provinces of 
Britain, which perplexed him not a little. 

‘‘ Whence then do you come ? 

“PYom the island beyond Britain,’’ Baithene 
replied ; and he added with a mixture of apology 
and pride, “ From the island the Romans never 
conquered.” 

A heathen land ! ” exclaimed the monk, with 
some agitation. How come you then to be 
Christians ? ” 

For he had seen them make the sign of the 
Cross, and make it in the orthodox Latin way. 
The sign of the Cross had significance in more 
than one way, then, as the sound of church bells 
and many other symbols. 

They told him about Patrick, and by degrees a 
light came into his face. He had heard a rumour 
of some new mission in that wild, far-off island, 
and also a rumour that the missionary bishop was 
in some way connected with their own sainted 
bishop, Martin of Tours. This he told them, and 
also that it was by the tomb of St. Martin they 
were standing. Both of their faces grew radiant 
at this new link with Patrick and home. Ethne 
knelt down again beside the tomb, and pressed her 
lips to the cold marble as if it had been a mother’s 
hand. 


TOURS AND HER SAINT. 75 

The monk questioned them about themselves, 
and listened with tender interest and strong 
indignation to their story. 

“Kidnapped by Christians, and sold to a Jew!’^ 
he exclaimed, in a climax of horror. “ In our 
Martin’s time we would have ransomed you at 
once at any price, if we had had to sell the vessels 
of the altar for it, as the blessed old man did 
himself when his young deacon moved too slowly 
to fulfil his bidding ; in his impetuous eagerness 
taking off his own sacerdotal robe when he was 
about to celebrate Mass, and throwing it around a 
wretched, naked beggar! Just as in his eager 
youth, when he was a soldier, he had cut his 
military cloak in two to give it to a beggar at 
Amiens!” 

They listened eagerly. That was indeed a saint 
worth hearing about. 

The old monk was launched on an endless 
subject when he began with St. Martin. 

“ But, alas ! ” he sighed in conclusion, “ times are 
changed. The ravages of the barbarians and the 
exactions of the Romans have impoverished us 
all ; and now the frightful hordes of these savage 
Huns may be on us any day. Perhaps also we 
are poorer in ourselves ; we care more for the 
splendour of our churches than for the poverty of 
our brothers. We want Martin’s poverty of spirit 
to make us rich as Martin to help and save. We 
want his love and faith before we can see the 
visions he saw. Have you ever heard of them ? 
of how, in the night, he saw our Lord among His 
angels, clothed in the garment he had given the 


76 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


beggar, and heard Him say to them, ‘Know ye 
who has thus arrayed Me ? My servant Martin ! ' ’’ 
Then seeing the intense interest in their eyes, the 
old monk said — “Would you come and see the 
hovel where Martin lived ? 

They followed him eagerly to a collection of 
huts and cells between the river and the cliffs, 
where, like the monks in Egypt and the East, he 
and many of his brethren still lived in community, 
but in separate caves and cells. And there he 
showed them Martin’s wooden hut, still carefully 
preserved. 

“ Here the saint lived and prayed,” he said. 
“ And here, as some think, he had the loveliest 
vision of all.” 

Then they listened with rapt attention, as he 
told how, “ while Martin was praying in his cell, 
the Evil Spirit stood before him, clad in a glittering 
radiancy, by this purposing the more easily to 
deceive him ; clad also in royal robes with a golden 
jewelled diadem, with shoes covered with gold, 
with serene face and bright looks, so as to seem 
nothing so little as what he was. Martin at first 
was dazzled by the sight, and for a long time both 
kept silence. At length the Evil One began. 

‘ Acknowledge,’ he said, ‘ O Martin, whom thou 
seest. I^am Christ. I am now descending on 
earth, and I wished first to manifest myself to 
thee.’ Martin still kept silence and made no 
answer. The Devil still continued to repeat his 
bold pretence. ‘Martin, why hesitate to believe, 
when thou seest I am Christ.^’ Then Martin 
understood, by the revelation of the Spirit, that it 


TOURS AND HER SAINT. 


77 


was the Evil One and not God ; and answered — 
‘Jesus the Lord said not He would come in 
glittering clothing and' radiant with a diadem. I 
will not believe that the Christ is come save in that 
form in which He suffered; save with the wounds 
of the Cross.’ At these words the Evil One vanished 
in smoke, leaving a horrible, hellish stench and 
fumes behind him.” 

The old man would have kept them till nightfall, 
but they felt bound in honour to return. Before 
they left the cells he gave them two small tablets, 
as letters of commendation to Anianus, Bishop of 
Orleans, and Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, who would, 
he said, be sure to help them if possible. “But,” 
he added, in a desponding tone, “ who knows 
whether Anianus and Lupus will be still living } 
or their cities, Orleans and Troyes, still standing } 
From all sides come the news of this army of 
locusts, these myriads of monstrous savages, 
ravaging and burning and destroying. Surely the 
end of the world is at hand. Yet these tablets 
may do you service ; keep them carefully.” And 
Ethne wrapped them in the folds of her plaid. 

The old monk accompanied them to the door of 
Eleazar s lodging. 

“ Kidnapped by Christians, purchased by a Jew!” 
he murmured, as he turned reluctantly away and 
left them. “ Would to God our Martin were here!” 

Miriam received them affectionately, and not 
without a look of triumph at her husband, who had 
not been sure they would ever return. Ethne was 
somewhat perplexed at the good monk’s last words. 

“Why should we wish to call Martin down 


78 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


again ?” she said. '‘Do not the saints always go 
on helping us in heaven ? And does not God go 
on making saints on earth ? ” 

“ I wonder if we shall ever find a living saint 
again on earth ! said Baithene. 

And Ethne returned to her “ lorica/' her breast- 
plate, Patrick’s Irish hymn — 


“ Christ in the chariot ; 
Christ in the ship ; 
Christ behind me ; 
Christ before me ; 
Christ within me ; 
Christ above me.” 



M 


CHAPTER VIII. 


FROM ROME TO THE BATTLE-FIELD. 



HE. morning after his conversation with 
Lucia on the way from the catacombs, 
Marius went on his way northward. 
Away from the corruption and lassi- 
tude of the Imperial Court, then resident for a time 
at Rome ; away from the decrepitude of Rome 
itself ; from the luxurious idleness of life among 
the rich in their palaces, among their thousands 
of slaves ; from the beggarly idleness of the pauper- 
ized populace ; from the aimlessness of life amongst 
all ; northward among the barbarians, to beat back 
the lower elements among them by means of the 
higher ; to find some battle worth fighting, some 
hero worth following, some new life worth living 
among these'new races, who were pouring in on the 
decrepit old world. Three hundred years before, 
Tacitus had written with enthusiasm about the 
Teutons, their courage, their chastity, their fidelity 
to wife and children and chieftain. In Rome it 
had seemed to Marius impossible to find anything 
but childishness and senility, or both combined ; 


8o 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


childhood without innocence, old age without 
experience. Perhaps in the north he might find 
manhood and youth. 

The alliance Aetius was endeavouring to effect 
for the Empire was with one of the noblest and 
most civilized of the Goths, with Theodoric, king 
of the Visigoths of Aquitaine. Marius travelled 
through the region of the Italian Latifundia, the 
enormous farms which some said were ruining 
Rome ; wide spaces with no habitations except the 
huge Ergastula, or workhouses, full of celibate 
slaves, ruled by freedmen who had learned from 
slavery not sympathy, like Patrick, but only slav- 
ishness, and a terrible ingenuity how to wring out 
the last drop of slave-labour. 

He wrote first to his mother from Ravenna — 

“ Ravenna seems full of two great names, the 
Augusta Galla Placidia, and Aetius. You remember 
the death of the Augusta last year at Rome, and 
the solemn funeral procession which bore her 
remains hither. For the moment Ravenna seems 
transformed from a court into a mausoleum of the 
Augusta. Her mausoleum is a palace of the dead, 
gorgeous with gold, and gems, and marble mosaics, 
with brilliant frescoes covering the domed roofs. 

Never surely in the tragic stories of Imperial 
houses can there have been one more tragic than that 
of the great Augusta, as they tell it here. Daughter 
of the great Theodosius ; taken captive in her 
beautiful youth at Alaric’s siege of Rome ; in her 
captivity winning the heart of the noblest of the 
Gothic princes, the young Ataulfus, and in return 
giving her whole heart to him, — her marriage seemed 


FROM ROME TO THE BATTLE-FIELD. 8 1 

a bridal not only of two royal hearts, but of two 
civilizations, of two races, of the north and the 
south, of the old world and the new. It seemed as 
if all that is highest and noblest in the old and in 
the new were united in it and through it. What 
hope might not dawn out of it for the world ? 
And in one year the fair vision had vanished like 
a morning dream ! The babe born of it, and 
welcomed with such rapture as a promise for all 
the world, died in infancy. The brave and generous 
young Gothic king lay dead in his palace, stabbed 
in the back by a slave in revenge for the death 
of his former master. The Augusta was driven 
out of Barcelona, the city where they were reigning, 
compelled to go on foot as a conquered captive 
before the chariot of her husband’s successor, and 
afterwards constrained to marry the General Con- 
stantins, a man with no qualifications for her hand 
but those of an able soldier and a jovial comic 
actor' at camp banquets. He died in a few years, 
apparently of dullness, from the constraint of the 
court life. 

“ She bore herself nobly in her second widow- 
hood, ‘the one man,’ they say, ‘of her family’; 
ruled the Empire diligently, chose her ministers 
wisely, steadfastly upheld the Christian faith, and 
strove to live by its laws ; and her son is the 
Emperor we all know too well ! The whole 
tragedy of her life is compressed in those three 
relationships : daughter of such a man as Theo- 
dosius, wife of such a man as Ataulfus, mother of 
such a thing as Valentinian ! 

“ I send this by a trusty hand ; if for safety’s sake 

F 


82 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


thou makest it into a palimpsest, write over it 
these words — Placidus semivir amens, 

“The whole of this Imperial city, the whole 
Empire, at this moment seem but a mausoleum for 
the Augusta, last of the Romans. For Aetius, 
alas ! the other name of which Ravenna is full, 
seems no leader likely to preserve the noblest in 
the old world or the new. He is indeed capable 
of ruling every one, and capable of understanding 
everything. To him come ‘the groans of the 
forsaken Britons ^ ; to him the embassies of the 
conquering Hun. Living as a hostage three years 
among the Huns, he knows Attila and his people 
intimately. Chief minister of the Augusta for 
seventeen years, he knows the Empire to the core 
of its corrupt heart. He has conquered the Franks, 
defended the Empire, and will, it seems, conciliate 
the Goths. But here they cannot forgive or forget 
his base treachery to Boniface his friend. Count of 
Africa, tempting him to rebel by false represent- 
ations of the enmity of the Augusta, and throwing 
him into alliance with the Vandals in Africa ; thus 
losing Rome her noblest general in Boniface, her 
richest granary in Africa, and the Church the whole 
province of Africa, the home of Perpetua, Cyprian, 
Monica, Augustine. 

“ Yet there is no one to follow but Aetius ; and 
I am going northward to Gaul. There is hope of 
an alliance with the Goths, and with their aid we 
may beat back the Huns. 

“Tell our Luciola I have no drops as yet from 
the Fountain of Youth for her. How indeed could 
we expect any from Ravenna, this city of mud and 


From rome to the battle-field. 83 

marshes — of every kmd of mud and every kind of 
marshy malaria, where water they say is often 
scarcer and dearer than wine ? Fleets of merchant 
ships, crowds of sailors of all nations, splendid 
palaces and more splendid churches ; but Living 
Water, the Fountain of Youth ; scarcely here!” 

His next letter was from Aquileia, the great port 
of the north of the Adriatic, where his family had 
had friendships from the days of Jerome, who was 
born there. 

“ This is a very great city, great with the natural 
greatness of its commanding position, guarded by 
the mountains, guarding the frontier, and command- 
ing the Adriatic ; great with the natural growth of 
its world-wide commerce, no mere artificial product 
of a heated court. 

‘‘ I feel better here than at Ravenna. Aquilo, the 
north wind from the mountains, cools and revives 
me. I can breathe, and bathe. Perhaps also 
there is a bracing north wind from the past, from 
the days of our forefathers, who came here six 
hundred years ago, when Rome was young, to form 
an outpost on the frontier against the barbarians 
of those days. These churches also have reverber- 
ated to great voices, even in thy days. Jerome 
perhaps gathered strength here for his fight for his 
translation of the Scriptures into the vulgar tongue, 
and his many other battles. And, moreover, the 
Lady Digna, to whom thy letter has introduced 
me, is herself as a fresh breeze from the mountains, 
and a revival of the old Rome my father loves, in 
her noble simplicity of life. Her palace is near the 
walls, with a lofty tower looking on the crystal waters 


84 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


of the river Natiso and towards the blue mountains 
of the north. She reminds me of the Aventine, 
and of thee and of my father and his old Rome. 
One feels she might have been one of the grand, 
pure matrons of the Republic.” 

From Aquileia Marius went through the plains 
of Lombardy by the south of Gaul to Lyons. 
Thence he wrote — 

I think of thee continually here, and how in 
our childhood was engraven on our hearts, from 
thy lips, the story of the Passion and the Victory 
of the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne ; of the ninety- 
years-old Bishop Pothinus dying, beaten with the 
iron rods, in prison ; of the mistress and the slave 
Blandina (like the African Perpetua and Felicitas) 
suffering the same tortures, sustaining each other 
in the same conflict, crowned with a similar crown. 
Blandina the slave maiden kept alive to the last, 
and, ‘as a noble mother animating her children, 
and sending them home to the Great King,’ after 
the torture from the tossing by the wild beasts, 
‘going forth as to a marriage-feast to her death,’ 
with the simple confession of faith, ^ I am a Chris- 
tian ; no wickedness is done amo7ig ns! 

“ Ah, beloved, what a golden time that seems to 
look back on! None of these dividing names, 
these heresies and schisms, but one glorious name, 
‘ Christian.’ None of these degraded lives among 
His followers. To be a Christian meant then to 
be good, ‘ to do no wickedness.’ Who would not 
win back such a time of faith and courage, of love 
and purity, at any cost } If it were only the Huns 
that ravaged the Empire ! If it were only the 


FROM ROME TO THE BATTLE-FIELD. 85 

heathen that did wickedness ! If it were only the 
heretics who persecuted ! But I must not write a 
Book of Lamentations. We have, as our Luciola 
always says, to live here and now, 

“ I am more content than I expected to be with 
my gracious and learned host, Sidonius Apollinaris. 
In the first place, he is my host, a relationship in 
itself demanding loyalty in return, and he is the 
kindest of hosts. My two mother-tongues are a 
recommendation for me to him ; the kind of 
natural inability to talk bad Greek and Latin 
derived from our father and from thee. I cannot, 
however, even from loyalty to a host, admire his 
style of poetry, much lauded as it is. The gods 
and goddesses, the heroes and nymphs, stalk about 
in it so like second-rate actors in a theatre. They 
seem at once so childish, poor dears, and so old- 
fashioned, so shadowy and so wooden ; the real 
world having been long possessed by heroes so 
much more living, by saints so much more original 
and interesting than these faded modern pictures 
of a world ill understood and so long passed 
away. 

‘‘ Why Venus and all the faded troop should be 
called back to bless a Christian marriage, or all 
Olympus to crown and glorify a modern senator, 
who at all events, whatever he believes or dis- 
believes, does not believe in them, one cannot see. 
Moreover, there are the false quantities which jar 
on one’s ear so curiously ! But I must not grow 
cynical. It must be a lack in me that I have 
no taste for the wit of acrostics or the pomp of 
panegyrics. And there is always the relief of 


86 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

turning from these to the simple old music of thy 
Homer, the earnest thought of thy Aeschylus, 
the pure limpid verse of our own Virgil. But I 
hear my host’s pleasant voice, and am stopped in 
good time by his gracious kindness.” 

I resume : — We assembled yesterday morning 
at the sepulchre of Saint Justin, and had Matins 
and Tierce with all the city. And then when the 
ordinary people had dispersed, we of the first 
families of Lyons made a rendezvous at the tomb 
of Syagrius the Saint. There, on the green sward 
under the trellised vines, was much merriment, and 
many good stories were told, — good happily in the 
sense not only of being witty, but of not being low 
or bad. And then, when, weary of this idleness, 
the young men played at tennis, and the old ones 
at backgammon, witty verses were composed and 
recited (one set in honour of a towel which had 
the privilege of wiping the perspiration from the 
face of an ‘ illustrious old gentleman,’ who had 
somewhat rashly ventured on tennis rather than 
on the more tranquil sport of backgammon). 

But 'what of the Huns } ’ perhaps you will ask. 
The Huns are some scores of miles away at 
present, and we are safe in Lyons. I suppose 
near the frontier they are so used to the roar of 
this advancing tide of the barbarians that they 
cease to hear it, like people who live close to a 
torrent, and only make their merriment a little 
louder to drown the tumultuous noise. Besides, 
all the time some of us, and among these my host, 
are doing what we can to keep off the Huns. 


FROM ROME TO THE BATTLE-FIELD. 8/ 

Aetiiis is doing his best to cement the alliance 
with the Gothic king Theodoric, and we hope he is 
prospering.” ‘ 

The next letter was from a country house near 
Arles. 

“ This villa reminds me of our palace on the 
Avcntine. The vestibule is full of statues. There 
are books in all kinds of ornamental cases. The 
ladies read, and seem to love best the sacred 
Scriptures. At least I found these on the chair 
where the young daughter of the house had been 
sitting, a new copy of the Gospels in Jerome’s 
version. Also the relations between the master 
and his hundreds of slaves are pleasant and 
friendly. 

Moreover, I am more in touch with Sidonius 
Apollinaris, who brought me here. I have seen 
him glow with a genuine passion of indignation 
against an oppressive Roman governor, who seems 
to have been ruining his district by exorbitant 
taxation, starving the labourers, grinding down the 
farmers, filling the prisons with the wretched vic- 
tims of the paid informers — a worse invasion than 
that of the barbarians. I shall be able to endure 
the tinsel of his panegyrics now that I have seen 
him burn with a genuine fire against wrong. 

“ But I am perplexed about this Hilary, Metro- 
politan of Arles, who died here not long since. 
The people seemed to think him such a saint, and 
to be indignant with our Leo for supporting a 
bishop of his province against his authority. 
Some say Leo is seeking to found a spiritual 
autocracy, an empire to tower above patriarch or 


88 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

emperor, above all authorities, ecclesiastical and 
secular. 

I cannot understand the rights of the contro- 
versy. Leo, of course, feels intensely the necessity 
of unity. He has seen the ruin of the African 
Church through its own divisions, and seen it 
become the prey of the heretic Arians. He has 
seen the chilling of the temperature in the Eastern 
Church through endless metaphysical discussions 
and secular battles. He sees the whole Roman 
world crumbling into dust. And he believes the 
Church itself, as far as the Church is in the world, 
must crumble and fall if it is not kept at unity 
with itself. And also he believes that he himself 
is the Heir and Vicar of Peter, the Prince of the 
Apostles, and that he has to keep the Church one 
and indivisible amidst the crash and crumbling of 
everything else. Is not this what he means ^ 
Nevertheless it perplexes me about his dispute 
with the holy Hilary of Arles. 

“ I copy for thee a passage from Hilary’s Lt/e of 
the Holy HonoratuSy Bishop of Arles, ‘ Great,’ he 
writes, ‘ O illustrious Honoratus, is thy glory. Thy 
merit did not need to be proved by signs and 
wonders. Thy life, full of virtues, presented a 
perpetual miracle. Many miracles and signs indeed 
w’^e saw, but of these thou thoughtest little. Greater 
to thee was the joy that Christ Himself should 
acknowledge thy merits and virtues than that men 
should observe thy miracles. Peace also has her 
martyrSy and thou, whilst thou didst remain in the 
body, wast a perpetual witness and martyr for 
Christ.’ ” 


FROM ROME TO THE BATTLE-FIELD. 89 

The next letter of Marius was from Marseilles. 

“ I am more at home here than since I left thee, 
with the Presbyter Salvian, his wife Palladia, and 
their daughter Auspiciola ; at home and cheerful. 
Not that Salvian is an optimist, or takes a cheerful 
view of the world or of the Church. But he dares 
to look at things as they are. One feels, with 
him, no longer dancing on a crust of ice above an 
abyss of dark waters. Although the change is 
scarcely more than that of clinging to the side of 
a precipice at the edge of an abyss, there is the 
rock to cling to. In short, I have come out of 
that stifling artificial atmosphere and breathe 
again. Salvian says of our Rome, ‘ Our own vices 
alone have conquered us ; ^ and to see that, if our 
Rome could indeed see it, would be to repent and 
live. 

‘‘ He compares us with the barbarians in a way 
which recalls Tacitus and his Teutons, perhaps 
idealizing the barbarians, but scarcely, I fear, cari- 
caturing the Romans. ‘You Romans and Chris- 
tians and Catholics,’ he writes, ‘ are defrauding your 
brothers, are grinding the faces of the poor, are 
frittering away your lives over the impure and 
heathenish spectacles of the amphitheatre ; you are 
wallowing in licentiousness and drunkenness. The 
barbarians meanwhile, heathens or heretics though 
they may be, and however fierce towards us, are 
just and fair in their dealings with one another. 
The men of the same clan, and following the same 
king, love one another with true affection. The 
impurities of the theatre are unknown amongst 
them. Many of their tribes are free from the taint 


90 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


of drunkenness, and among all, except the Alans 
and the Huns, chastity is the rule.^ 

“ His own home is like a monastery for austerity 
and regularity of life. His wife and daughter con- 
secrate themselves to a religious life, and all the 
household are devoted to the service of the poor. 
He is a presbyter, but he is revered far and wide 
for his learning, secular and sacred ; his counsel is 
sought by the highest and the lowest, and he has 
been called a teacher of bishops {Magister Episco- 
porimi), 

‘‘ His sympathies are with the down-trodden and 
the poor. He pleads fervently for those wretched 
peasants who revolted lately in Northern Gaul 
(called by their oppressors Bagaudse, L e. a mob). 
‘ They were despoiled, afflicted, murdered, by 
wicked and bloody judges, and shall we impute 
their misfortunes to them } We have made them 
what they are. Shall we call those rebellious and 
lost whom we compelled to be criminals ? By 
what were they made Bagaudae (a mob) but by 
our iniquities, by the injustice of judges, by the 
proscriptions, rapine, and exactions of those who 
turned the public revenues into emoluments for 
themselves ? ’ 

‘‘ Thank God for these days with Salvian ; they 
make me hope once more.*' 

The last letter was from Toulouse, from the 
court of Theodoric, King of the Visigoths. 

‘‘ Here at last ! On our way to encounter the 
enemy at last, among these brave Goths, men at 
least, if barbarians ; Christians in some sort, if 
Arians. Every morning before dawn the king and 


FROM ROME TO THE BATTLE-FIELD. 9I 


some of his household attend divine service in the 
church. At his banquets no women singers are 
admitted, no exciting, dissolute songs are allowed. 
The music, such as it is, is martial and manly. 

And in conclusion, the alliance between the 
Empire and the Visigoths is accomplished. To- 
morrow we shall be on our way to join Aetius, and 
to relieve the city of Orleans. Not a day too soon, 
they say ; God grant it may not be too late. For 
the countless hosts of the Huns have gathered 
around the city for weeks ; their battering-rams 
have been planted against the walls, and their un- 
erring arrows have been slaughtering the garrison. 

“ I dispatch this hence. To-morrow we are to 
be on our way to the battle-field, wherever and 
whatever that may prove to be.^' 




CHAPTER IX. 

ORLEANS — HER SAINT AND HER SIEGE. 

HE day after the interview of Baithene 
and Ethne with the monk, they left 
Tours, and rowed up the river in a 
small boat to Orleans. It was fresh 
life to Baithene to take his place at an oar, to feel 
delivered from the passive condition of following 
Eleazar about, interpreting bargains he detested, 
and picking up fragments of the talk around him 
in the streets. As he pulled up against the stream, 
straining every muscle in the contest with wind 
and water, he felt a man again, and something of a 
king. 

^ The little boat made good way under his vigorous 
strokes. But at one point they ran some risk of 
being seized to act as a ferry-boat for a troop of 
fugitives, women and children, who were crowded 
together on the bank on the north side of the 
river. 

Have mercy on us, have mercy,’’ they cried, 
and carry us across.” 

Baithene laid up his oars for a moment and 



§ 


ORLEANS — HER SAINT AND HER SIEGE. 93 

paused. Eleazar with violent gestures urged him 
forward, but having the power for the moment in 
his own hands, Baithene gave no heed, but still 
waited to listen. 

They soon gathered that these were fugitives 
from the Huns, who were rapidly sweeping down 
on Aquitaine from the north. Their village had 
been burnt ; they had friends in Aquitaine, and 
were seeking safety by putting the Loire between 
them and the foe. Miriam’s heart softened at once. 
Baithene thought the women and children might 
be ferried over in three or four crossings, while the 
few men among them must swim. This *was 
accomplished, and the little rescued company, 
kneeling on the southern bank, showered bene- 
dictions on them as they again pulled up the river. 

They had to halt twice for the night, and they 
took care to make their halting-places on the 
southern shore. On the third evening they reached 
Orleans. 

The voyage had been a great rest and happiness 
to Ethne. The beauty of the wooded hills clothed 
with trees, many of them new to her — chestnuts, 
maples, and poplars ; the vineyards with their 
promise of grapes, and the cultivated fields, 
delighted her. Here and there also in the cliffs 
under which they passed were arched doors of 
caves, which she imagined might be cells of holy 
hermits or monks like Martin. 

When they came to Orleans they found the 
city in a tumult of apprehension. The walls were 
carefully guarded, and also the approaches by the 
river. Soldiers in Roman armour stopped them 


94 ATTILA AND HlS CONQUERORS. 

at the landing-place and forbade them to dis- 
embark. 

“ We do not want any more helpless people to 
guard or any more hungry mouths to feed/' they 
said. 

It was an anxious moment; if they were turned 
back there was no other place of refuge. But 
suddenly Ethne remembered the letter the monk 
of Tours had given them for Anianus the Bishop. 
She reminded Baithene, and they told Miriam and 
Eleazar, who had heard the name of Anianus, and 
eagerly caught at this means of escape. They 
handed the tablet to the officer of the guard, and 
after a little further parley he agreed to let them 
land, and to have them conducted to the Bishop. 
Eleazar remained on the quay in charge of his 
precious merchandise. It was a reversal of rela- 
tions for Ethne and Baithene to become the patrons 
and protectors of Eleazar and Miriam. 

The Bishop was, as was so often the case in 
those tumultuous times, also the secular ruler 
(at all events in the moment of danger), and in a 
sense the military commander, as well as the 
spiritual head of the city ; the representative of 
the only organization out of the ancient Roman 
world of law and order which remained substan- 
tially standing. 

The name of Anianus was their passport every- 
where. When after some delay they were admitted 
to his presence, it was a matter of no small 
difficulty, in many ways, to explain their com- 
plicated relation to each other and to the world 
in general. Captive princes or nobles of any kind 


ORLEANS— HER SAINT AND HER SIEGE. 95 

from Ireland had something of a mythical sound, 
as if they had dropped out of fairyland, or some 
old legend, or some far-off fabled Atlantis. That 
these high-born captives should be also Christians 
was still more perplexing, the fact of Patrick’s 
mission having scarcely yet penetrated to Orleans. 
To expect Ethne or Baithene to define what kind 
of Christians they were was quite hopeless, they 
being in blissful ignorance of all heresies and 
schisms, Eastern or Western, Pelagian, Arian, 
Nestorian, Eutychian, or Manichean. Then came 
the other side of the perplexity, their being 
purchased by a Jew. An Edict of Theodosius 
had indeed many years before recognized an 
essential distinction between Jews and Pagans, 
and had decreed that the Jewish worship was to 
be respected, and that the Jewish synagogues were 
not to be destroyed. But that a Jew should own 
a Catholic Christian as a slave was a questionable 
thing. Slavery indeed, altogether, was to the 
Christian Church a questionable right, indeed 
essentially an unquestionable wrong. But accord- 
ing to Roman law, as an actual fact, it had to be 
admitted. Not long before, in Gaul, a free woman 
taken captive and made a slave, though the 
injustice was admitted, had to be left in bondage. 
Manumission had always been frequent among 
the Romans ; the redemption of slaves and cap- 
tives was a constant form of charitable work in 
the Church ; but in the present distress there were 
no funds at hand for ransom, and, moreover, it 
must have seemed doubtful whether it would be 
any gain to these young friendless foreigners, 


96 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


especially to the fair young Irish maiden, to turn 
them adrift free and unprotected into the world of 
bloodshed and disorder, of violence and wickedness 
of every kind around them. 

After much kindly consideration, it was decided 
that quarters should be assigned to the four, and 
that the question of freedom or slavery should be 
left in abeyance. But to Baithene’s great joy the 
condition was added, that no idle hands could be 
tolerated in the city, threatened as it was with 
siege and assault from the fierce hordes of Attila, 
who were fast advancing to cross the Loire, and 
make a raid on the kingdom of the Visigoths in 
Aquitaine. 

That evening, therefore, the four were established 
in rooms near the walls of the city, with a sense 
of freedom for Ethne and Baithene greater than 
they had felt since they had been swept away 
from their home. The reversal of relations be- 
tween the captives and their purchaser, though 
at first exceedingly displeasing to Eleazar, proved, 
thanks to the tender pity of Miriam, and the sweet 
serviceableness of Ethne, a bond of union ; 
Baithene also being naturally ready to render 
in a princely way twice as much service as he 
would have done by constraint. Eleazar himself, 
moreover, was much softened when he sav/ that 
their honour was more to be trusted than the 
security of bonds. 

The stipulation imposed on Baithene was no 
child’s play. Very soon the flames of burning 
villages were to be seen from the walls ; then 
came troops of fugitives flying to take refuge in 


ORLEANS — HER SAINT AND HER SIEGE. 97 

the country beyond the river, the citizens not 
daring to extend their hospitality to helpless, 
hungry strangers, who might not only find the 
walls of Orleans no shelter for themselves, but 
make the defence hopeless for all. 

Night and day the walls had to be manned and 
guarded, and the fortifications strengthened as far 
as possible. Excursions had to be made into the 
neighbouring country to gather in fruits and corn 
and cattle while yet there was time to save any- 
thing from the plundering of the savage hosts. 
Thus between carrying stones for building, con- 
voying expeditions for foraging, and guarding the 
walls, Baithene had little time at home, and was 
well content with such morsels of food or moments 
of broken sleep as could be snatched at intervals 
during his labours. The habits of command and 
direction, the training of hand and eye in chase, 
or foray, or skirmish among the clans at home, 
had given him faculties for military service which 
were soon recognized. He had a quickness in, 
seeing and seizing opportunities, and a dash of 
daring courage which delighted the Roman officers, 
whilst to him the training in the Roman discipline 
was of the highest price. 

Nearer and nearer drew the fierce nation of 
warriors and plunderers, numbered by hundreds 
of thousands. By their mere presence they would 
have eaten up the land like a cloud of locusts ; 
and they came not as mere locusts devouring in 
order to live, but as a predatory army fearfully 
organized to destroy ; bent on carrying away all 
the plunder they could, and also on leaving behind 

G 


98 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

all the devastation they could ; ravaging not 
merely to impoverish Gaul, but through impover- 
ishing Gaul to ruin Rome. 

Soon the fires of the burnt villages and towns 
smouldered and died out; and instead came the 
outposts of the terrible horde itself. Troops of 
Tartar horsemen dashed up to the walls of the 
city ; little beardless brown men with long black 
hair, man and horse apparently grown into one, 
the riders waving their spears as they stood on 
the backs of their horses, or stooping underneath 
to pick up some dropped weapon ; the man 
apparently an integral development of the horse, 
the horse not so much ridden as inspired and 
possessed by the man. Baithene, gazing at them 
for the first time from the walls, in the dusk of the 
evening, could not wonder at the rumours that 
they were not human at all, but the offspring of 
witches and demons. From time to time through 
the darkness came an unearthly combined yell, 
like the howl of a wild beast or malignant demon ; 
and he crossed himself, thought of the exorcism in 
the baptismal service, and repeated his renunciation 
of the devil from the bottom of his heart. He had 
to watch through that night, and early in the first 
flush of the morning he saw that the horizon was 
dim with a great cloud of dust, whilst in the 
distance, through the silence of the dawn, was heard 
the grinding of huge wagon-wheels, with all the 
tumult of the movement of a vast multitude. 

Slowly the huge host gathered in from all sides, 
until the confused hum and murmur began to 
define itself into various sounds— the creaking of 


ORLEANS — HER SAINT AND HER SIEGE, gg 

wheels, the cracking of whips, the lowing of oxen, 
the neighing of horses, the harsh voices of men, 
the shrill voices of women, even the wailing of 
babes ; and through all the deep under-hum of an 
enormous mass of human beings in motion. The 
hearts of the men on the walls quailed with a weird 
terror; for through all came the unfamiliar 
cadences of wild foreign speech, with a sense that 
this living mass which was closing in around them 
with deadly purpose, to plunder and kill, to burn 
and to destroy, was pouring forth from the un- 
known boundless spaces of savage wildernesses, an 
interminable tide of destruction swelling up as 
from some unfathomable abyss of hell. 

A preternatural terror hung over these hordes, 
but more especially around Attila himself, the 
Scourge of God, the ally of demons, who was 
known now to be in their midst, directing the 
devastations with the deadliest skill of destruc- 
tion, practised in ravaging the fairest lands into 
deserts, and in razing the stateliest cities into 
ruin so utter as never to be repaired. With a 
frightful faculty of appropriating from the civiliza- 
tion he sought to destroy just the very elements 
which enabled him to destroy it, from the courts 
of Ravenna and Constantinople he had learnt the 
art of conquering by dividing. And at this 
moment the chief anxiety in Orleans was the 
doubt whether he might not have succeeded by his 
cunning in breaking the alliance between Theodoric, 
King of the Visigoths, and the great General 
Aetius, who had promised Bishop Anianus some 
weeks before in his palace at Arles to relieve the 
LofC. 


lOO 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


city with the combined forces of Goth and Roman, 
at the latest, by the fourteenth of June. Attila was 
too shrewd to attempt to substitute Roman discipline 
and methods of warfare for the dash and fury of 
the charges and wheelings of his wild horsemen. 
But he had learnt something of the art of besieging 
from his foes, from the captives of the cities he had 
ruined ; and in the dusk of the morning they saw 
the huge battering-rams being drawn up to the walls. 

It was the combination of the mechanical weight 
of a vast multitude, a host not of men but of 
nations, of the wild swiftness and unexpectedness 
of their assaults, reckless of peril as a troop of 
wild beasts, with the preternatural terror of the 
unknown spaces from which they issued, and the 
unknown powers of darkness from which they were 
said to have sprung, that made the approach of these 
Huns so paralyzing. And in Attila himself the 
terror was concentrated. The terror of his name 
and the weight of his rule, if that could be called 
rule which was a disorganization of all existing 
order, were known from the borders of China and 
the great Tartar desert through Hungary to Con- 
stantinople, and to the coasts of northernmost Scan- 
dinavia. Thus these demon armies had for the 
moment a Satanic Majesty, a Prince of the power of 
the air, before whose crafts and assaults the feeble 
diplomacy of Constantinople and Ravenna was as 
the innocent cunning of a child. 

As the end of Baithene's watch was drawing near 
he heard a yell from the advancing host, which 
seemed a cry of welcome and triumph ; and, strain- 
ing his eyes, he caught sight of a multitude of 


ORLEANS— HER SAINT AND HER SIEGE. lOI 


horsemen whirling round a central point like a 
whirlpool. There were frantic cries from many 
of these Tartar horsemen ; there was a wheeling 
and rushing to and fro of the nimble little horses, 
a waving of spears, a flaunting of rude banners, a 
metallic clashing of cymbals and shields. And 
through the still morning air the sound of one 
terrible name was borne to the besieged in count- 
less shrill tones of exultation — ‘‘Attila! Attila ! ” 
The besieged repeated it to each other in hoarse 
murmurs and whispers, as those who think they see 
some gruesome preternatural phantoms in the dark. 
“ Attila ! Attila ! the darling of the devil, the 
Scourge of God.” 

The hour for relieving guard had arrived ; silently 
the wearied men left the walls. 

Baithene was angry with himself for the presenti- 
ments of evil which seemed to reduce him to the 
resignation of dull despair. But as they came near 
the cathedral, the little band of soldiers met a pro- 
cession of white-robed priests, heading a multitude 
eagerly thronging to the church. He entered with 
them, and knelt in the stillness amidst the throng of 
silent worshippers. 

Then came the solemnity of the daily Eucharist. 
Not lamentations and litanies, but hymns of joy and 
thanksgiving, in the sonorous Latin which was the 
common tongue, in some measure understood by 
all. Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax Jiominibus 
bonce voluntatis, ‘'We praise Thee, we bless Thee, 
we worship Thee, we give thanks to Thee for Thy 
great glory, O God, Heavenly King, God the Father 
Almighty. 


102 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

“O Lord, the only-begotten Son, Jesu Christ, 
Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, Who 
takest away the sins of the world, have mercy 
upon us. Thou Who takest away the sins of 
the world, receive our prayer ; Thou Who sittest at 
the right hand of the Father, have mercy upon us ; 
for Thou only art holy. Thou only art the Lord, 
Thou only art most high, O Jesu Christ, with the 
glory of God the Father.'’ 

And afterwards the great hymn of perpetual 
festival. “ It is very meet, right, and our bounden 
duty that we should at all times and in all places give 
thanks unto Thee, O Lord, Holy Father, Almighty, 
Everlasting God, through Christ our Lord, through 
Whom the Angels praise Thy Majesty, Whom 
the Dominations adore, before Whom the Powers 
tremble, the Heavens and all the Powers therein. 
Whom the Blessed Seraphim with mutual exult- 
ation celebrate ; with Whom we also would pray 
that Thou shouldst command our voices to take 
part, with humble confession, saying, Holy, Floly, 
Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, Heaven and earth are 
full of Thy glory ; Hosanna in the highest ; Blessed 
is He that cometh in the name of the Lord." 

And as he listened, the mighty host of the 
barbarians, and the little company of the besieged, 
seemed to dwindle into a mere ship's company on 
a stormy sea, whilst all around him were the open 
heavens with their victorious multitudes before the 
Throne. Whatever the result of this present con- 
flict might be, the victory along the whole line was 
sure, the victory of good, of God, of the Lamb that 
was slain, of the Redeeming Lord conquering and 


ORLEANS — HER SAINT AND HER SIEGE. IO3 

to conquer. With a heart full of peace and courage 
he knelt at the close of the service, when the aged, 
white-haired Bishop, shepherd and father of the 
people, came forward and raised his hand in 
benediction. He lingered some time in the silence 
after the voices ceased, when a gentle hand was laid 
on his shoulder, and looking up he saw the radiant 
face of his sister, and the soft grey eyes, luminous 
with thejoy and trust within. Then together they 
left the church and returned to Eleazar’s rooms. 

The church is never shut day nor night,” she 
said ; ‘‘ every hour without ceasing prayers go up 
to God to relieve the city.” 

‘‘The succour ought to be here soon indeed,” 
said Baithene, “ if the city is to be saved.” 

After that the brother and sister had little 
opportunity of speaking to each other for many 
weeks. Baithene was on the ramparts ; whilst 
Ethne was with another army of succour organized 
by the Bishop within the city — a band of devoted 
women who took the wounded into places of 
shelter, dressed their wounds, and did all they 
could to relieve the starvation and misery all 
around. 

All these weeks the terrible struggle went on, by 
assault, blockade, starvation. The battering-rams 
were drawn up to the walls ; but these in the un- 
trained hands of the Huns were more than matched 
by the catapults and fiery missiles thrown by the 
trained soldiers of the Roman garrison. 

It was the arrows of the Huns, shot with unerr- 
ing aim from their huge bows, which did the 
deadliest damage, clearing the walls of the 


104 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

defenders, as they fell one by one smitten to 
death. It was at the risk of life that the Bishop 
and his clergy came up on the ramparts, with 
chant of litanies, and bearing sacred relics, to re- 
animate the garrison. 

More than five weeks had passed since Bishop 
Anianus had seen the General Aetius in the 
palace at Arles, and obtained a promise of speedy 
succour. The fourteenth of June, the day he 
promised at the latest to bring the relieving forces, 
was fast approaching, and the courage and hope of 
the besieged were failing. Not a few began to 
murmur against the Bishop, and to hint that he 
had deceived them with promises of imaginary 
succour. About the tenth or eleventh of June the 
bright sunshine was clouded over by a fearful 
storm. For three days the thunder rolled, the 
lightning flashed, heavy clouds darkened all the 
land, a tempest of rain and hail poured down, the 
battle of the elements giving a respite for the time 
to the battle with the barbarian host. 

At last the sun broke forth again, only proving 
a signal for the renewal of the deadly strife. Once 
more Bishop Anianus sent forth a messenger to 
the Roman general, with the appeal, ‘‘If ye come 
not to-day it will be too late.’’ 

The soldier never re-appeared. Then it was 
rumoured that the Bishop himself had gone forth 
to negotiate with Attila, and had returned with 
the message that Attila would accept nothing 
but absolute surrender. Then came a tumult of 
despair, a crashing of walls, a dashing open of 
gates. There were countless contradictory rumours 


ORLEANS — HER SAINT AND HER SIEGE. I05 

as to how it all happened ; but one thing was 
certain, the gates were open, and the city was laid 
bare to her foes. The Huns were pouring in on that 
day, which was to have been the day of deliverance, 
in overwhelming numbers, with the fury of a savage 
host little accustomed to delay, and destitute of 
mercy ; massacring unresisting women and children, 
sparing none and nothing except for the purposes 
of pillage or slavery. 

Yet still the Bishop and the clergy, with many 
of the people, filled the cathedral, and poured forth 
prayers in their anguish to God, the aged Bishop 
prostrate before the altar, and bathing the steps 
with his tears. 

It was said that at that last hour the aged 
Bishop sent forth a messenger from the cathedral 
to the walls, saying, “ Look forth from the ramparts 
and see if God’s mercy will yet succour us.” The 
messenger came back and said he beheld no man. 
But still the Bishop commanded the people, “ Pray 
in faith ; the Lord will deliver you to-day.” 

They went on praying. Again the aged voice 
they had trusted so long rose and bade one of them 
mount the walls and look out again. No help was 
seen approaching. . 

For the third time the Bishop said, If ye pray 
in faith the Lord will yet be at hand to help you 
speedily ! ” 

Then with weeping and loud lamentations they 
implored the mercy of the Lord. And when that 
prayer of agony had arisen, once more, for the 
third time, the old man bade them go to the wall 
and look. And back to that weeping multitude, 


I06 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

waiting in breathless silence, came at last the glad 
tidings, '‘We saw from afar as it were a cloud rising 
out of the ground.” 

And the Bishop said, “ It is the help of GodI 

Then through the city, from the top of the tower, 
resounded the cry The Romans ! the Romans!'^ 
Aetius and King Theodoric with their troops dashed 
up to the gates ; there was an encounter outside 
the walls ; the Huns were defeated ; the Roman 
and Gothic army poured into the city, and there 
were deadly encounters in every street. 

Victory remained with the relieving force. 
Gradually the fierce brown men from the East were 
driven out of the gates ; the whole army of Attila 
was thrown into disorder, and made a hasty retreat 
through the land they had ravaged into a wilder- 
ness, knowing well the deadly vengeance that 
awaited them from every fragment of the towns 
and villages they had ruined and despoiled. 

Bishop Anianus did not forget mercy even in 
this moment of rescue and triumph. Many a fallen 
foe among the Huns was saved by his intercession, 
even in the city they had so nearly brought to 
destruction. 

Baithene came eagerly into the Jew’s lodging to 
share the joy of deliverance with Ethne ; but to 
his dismay she was not there. It was some little 
time before he found her in one of the streets, 
kneeling beside a dying boy left behind by the 
Huns, leaning the poor ugly brown head on her 
knee, moistening the parched lips with water, chaf- 
ing the cold, quivering hands. " Brother,” she 
said softly, “ it might have been thee ! ” 


ORLEANS— HER SAINT AND HER SIEGE. 10/ 

The death-pallor was on the lips, and soon the 
quivering limbs lay rigid on the ground beside 
them. 

Then, looking up, the two saw a young Roman 
on horseback, with his eyes fixed on them. He 
had been watching Ethne for some minutes in 
silence. Ethne, raising her eyes to his, said, 
“ Bishop Anianus told us to do what we could even 
for a wounded enemy.’’ 

There was a glow of sympathy in his face as he 
replied — 

“ Pardon me, lady ! I was thinking it was just 
what my own mother and sister in Rome would 
have done.” And with a gesture of reverence he 
rode on. 

But that night in his dreams there came to 
Marius a vision of the fair kind face of the maiden 
with the soft dark-grey eyes, and the poor brown 
head of the dying Hun on her knee. 

Could it have been a dim, prophetic vision of 
another siege of Orleans, and another Maid of 
Orleans, seeing a wounded Englishman dying by 
the roadside, alighting from her horse, and, like a 
tender sister, holding his head on her knee to the 
last ? Or was it only the remembrance stamped into 
his heart of the young Irish maiden ? 




CHAPTER X. 

TROYES— HER SAINT AND HER SALVATION. 

HE siege of Orleans was raised. But 
it was some time before any feeling of 
security could be restored to the city ; 
before the rescued citizens could feel 
sure that the flying squadrons of the nimble Tartar 
horsemen were not merely wheeling away in some 
of their bewildering manoeuvres, to dash back with 
redoubled force against the walls. 

All that night, therefore, Lhere was anxious 
watching kept from rampart and tower. Between 
the almost incredible joy of rescue, and the moans 
of the wounded and dying, there was little sleep in 
Orleans that night. 

Baithene kept guard near one of the breaches of 
the shattered walls, and gradually the silence of 
the deserted fields, so lately the camping-ground 
of a nation, flowed over him with a sense of 
deliverance and peace. For some time there was 
a distant sound of the multitudinous movements 
of a retreating host ; but the sounds were like 
those of an ebbing tide, growing fainter and 



TROYES — HER SAINT AND HER SALVATION. IO9 

fainter and more broken, till they died away 
altogether, and he felt that the foe was really 
gone. 

Joyful and solemn was the early Eucharist in the 
cathedral the next morning. Baithene met Ethne 
at the portal. Bishop Anianus and all the clergy 
were there. The church was full, and every prayer 
and anthem went up with the throb of a great 
multitude. But again in the moment of triumph, 
as in the moment of anguish, the Eucharistic 
hymns rose up beyond the moment. Deep in 
every heart was thanksgiving for rescue from 
ravage and ruin ; but deeper and higher still flowed 
the eternal tide of joy in the rescue and redemp- 
tion of the world, not for a moment but for ever, 
not by a victorious army but by a willing Victim, 
not through the triumph of force but through the 
weakness of the Cross. As through the anguish 
of suspense had risen thq Eucharistic song, We 
praise Thee, we bless Thee, we worship TheeP so 
through the triumph flowed the tenderness of the 
Eternal Sacrifice, the love that was perpetually 
giving itself. 

Roman and Gothic soldiers knelt together. 
Ethne^s head was bowed, and her eyes, when she 
lifted them, were full of tears. Perhaps alone 
among that exulting multitude, in her prayers the 
vanquished and retreating enemy had a share. 
The ugly brown head of the dying boy so near 
her brother’s age, his feeble, grateful smile, his 
groans of pain, were in her heart. Perhaps in that 
worshipping multitude there were few besides who 
felt as she did how far the tide of redeeming 


no ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

love might reach from the heart of “ the Lamb of 
God, Who taketh away the sins of the world.’’ 

As they left the church, at the door they met 
once more the young Roman officer who had 
watched them from his horse while the Tartar 
boy was dying. He evidently recognized them, 
and respectfully made way for them. 

The city was full of joy. Every house in it for 
the moment seemed like a side-chapel of a cathe- 
dral, so deeply had the intercessions of Bishop 
Anianus with God and man, with the Roman 
general and the Gothic king, day and night in the 
church, in the streets, and on the ramparts, moved 
every heart. 

Ethne and Baithene had already many friends 
in Orleans, and began to feel at home there in a 
community of brethren. They would gladly have 
stayed there, but Eleazar was restless to depart, 
and, to the dismay of Miriam, nothing would 
dissuade him from going northward in the track 
of the retreating army. He had fellow-country- 
men and commercial relations in Troyes. The 
city of Troyes was a great commercial emporium, 
the central point of a network of Roman roads, 
and once there, he thought he could make his way 
whither he would. The second morning after the 
raising of the siege, the little party therefore started 
from one of the gates of Orleans. They had hired 
of a citizen two strong mules, which were to accom- 
pany them to the nearest point on the river Seine, 
by which Eleazar had determined to reach Troyes. 
Danger was everywhere, but he felt safe and less 
likely to be observed in a boat on a river. As 


TROYES — HER SAINT AND HER SALVATION. Ill 


they went through the gate, the young Roman 
officer was there, commanding the guard. He saw 
them at once, and this time came forward and 
asked if he could render them any assistance. 

“Surely/’ he said, “you are not going forth 
on the track of the enemy across this waste 
land.?” 

Eleazar was disposed to resent any interference 
with his private affairs, but he dared not refuse to 
state whither and on what errand they were going. 

“We must needs go hence without delay,” he 
said ; “but we are only poor folk, and our poverty 
will be our best protection against plunder. In a 
short time we hope to be safe amongst friends.” 

Marius, the young Roman, felt he had no right 
to inquire further. Besides, -what protection had 
he to offer .? Already a portion of the Roman and 
Gothic armies had left in pursuit of the retreating 
Huns, and that day the rest were to follow, leaving 
Orleans to repair her own walls and defend herself. 
Therefore, though with a sore heart, and much 
perplexed as to the relations between the fair- 
haired youth and maiden and the dark. Oriental- 
looking old man, he let the little company pass on. 
To direct attention to them might, he felt, only 
increase their peril, but he watched them far across 
the desolate plain, until the little band disappeared 
from his sight on the edge of a forest. 

Eleazar was well versed in making his way 
through perils. They rather avoided the imperial 
roads, and crept along through by-ways. As it 
happened, their present peril was rather from 
hunger than from robbery, so thoroughly had the 


II2 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


Huns ravaged the land and massacred or hunted 
away the inhabitants. By day they travelled miles 
without seeing a human being. The green corn 
had been cut down for the cattle ; the vineyards 
were a tangle of scarred and broken stems ; the 
husbandmen and vine-dressers had fled no one 
knew whither. The June sunshine shone down on 
a broad waste of trampled desert. All along the 
way, moreover, there were ghastlier traces of the 
invasion ; unburied corpses lying by the wayside 
in heaps, or one by one, smitten down in their 
flight; and at night, when they sought shelter 
behind the walls of some burnt village,^ only the 
dogs gathered round them — cowed, lean, hungry 
dogs, whom the Irish deer-hound for the most 
part frightened away — poor famished dogs, finding 
terrible food in the human bones scattered around 
the ruined homes. 

Only one night did they happen to find any 
traces of the inhabitants. It was the last day before 
they reached the banks of the Seine. They had 
encamped for the night on the edge of a forest, and 
spread their rugs and garments on the ground 
inside the ruined walls of a hovel. In the middle 
was a hole full of ashes, and on these still lay some 
charred chestnuts. Outside was a stone trough by 
a little spring, which bubbled up and trickled into 
it; a broken pitcher had been left beside it. In a 
corner of the little ruined home Ethne discovered 
a rude wooden cradle and a child's rattle. When 
she saw it she burst into an uncontrollable fit of 
weeping. When Miriam tried to comfort her in 
this rare burst of emotion, “ Where, where is the 


TROYES— HER SAINT AND HER SALVATION. II3 

4 

poor mother.?” was all she could say, “and the 
little child.?” 

When she recovered, and had begun with 
Baithene to gather chips for the fire among the 
trees near at hand, they heard a faint hushed 
wail near them, as if some one were trying to 
soothe the cries of a child. Creeping softly on into 
the forest, they came on a little family group, an 
old man and a young woman, with two children 
crying for hunger. Something in Ethne’s face and 
voice always made people trust her, and to her 
delight she found she understood what they were 
saying to each other. 

“ They are of the Bagaudae ! ” she said to Bai- 
thene. “ The poor oppressed peasants of our own 
race ! ” and she insisted on bringing them all to the 
hovel. 

Eleazarwasnot altogether pleased at this addition 
to the family circle ; but Miriam welcomed them 
as her father Abraham might of old. The fire was 
lit, and cakes of flour were laid on it, and shared 
with the hungry peasants. The children were 
evidently quite at home. They ran up to the 
cradle, and for the moment all their sorrows were 
blotted out at the discovery of their own lost toys ; 
and soon all slept, except Ethne and the mother, 
who held a whispered conversation. 

“ What will you do to-morrow night .? ” Ethne 
asked, a royal instinct of providing for others 
always deep in her heart. 

“ Perhaps we may creep back home again,” the 
woman said. 

At first she seemed afraid to say more ; but no 

H 


1 14 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

one could hesitate long to confide in Ethne. And 
soon her story came out. 

The Huns are gone,” Ethne said, and the 
Romans and Goths are pursuing them.” 

But that scarcely seemed to comfort the poor 
mother. She explained that though the Huns were 
their worst enemies, as they destroyed their crops 
and burnt their homes, still, whoever ruled, they, 
the peasants, were al^yays slaves, sure to be com- 
pelled to work as hard and live on as little as 
possible, whether the masters were Goths or 
Romans ; and it seemed that in some respects the 
Roman tax-gatherers were the worst oppressors 
of all, because they understood best how to wring 
out the last farthing. 

Then, seeing Ethne’s sympathetic distress, she 
took to comforting her in turn, and confided to her 
that her husband and the men of the family were 
in hiding not far off, and that they had little secret 
storehouses of fruits and grain. She told her also 
of a wonderful old man, who lived alone in a cave 
of the forest, and spoke of the good Lord and 
Saviour, and baptized the little ones and taught 
them, and sometimes gathered them together for 
the Holy Eucharist. And so Ethne was comforted. 

At last they reached the river Seine, and found 
a few frightened boatmen willing to row them up 
to Troyes, which they reached in safety on the 
fourth evening after they left Orleans. There 
Eleazar found his friends, but received a scant 
welcome. 

Why came you hither ? ” they said. Of what 
use is it to be at the meeting-place of roads going 


TROYES — HER SAINT AND HER SALVATION. II5 

in every direction, when the stations on all the 
roads are abandoned, and many of the roads them- 
selves broken up ? The Huns are pushing on 
through the country. Some of their horsemen 
galloped past the town yesterday, and to-morrow 
we may be overwhelmed by the whole flying host.’^ 

The wilful old man was convinced for once that 
he had made a mistake, but he said — 

“ Who can say which way is the worst ? South- 
ward are the Romans and Goths, victorious ; here 
are the Huns, defeated. The victorious Romans 
are as bad for us to encounter as the defeated 
Tartars. Little choice for us between heathen 
vanquished and Christian victors. What will the 
citizens of Troyes do ? ” 

“ We have no defence,^' was the grim reply. 

Troyes has no walls.’' 

“ Why then,” said Eleazar, do you not all take 
flight at once ? ” 

“ Troyes has a Bishop,” was the reply ; a great 
saint, who is clothed in rough raiment, and lives on 
nothing, they say, like our Elijah. He is called 
Lupus. The people believe in him ; they believe 
the city is walled around by his prayers.” 

‘‘ Another Anianus ! another living saint ! ” mur- 
mured Ethne, turning with shining eyes on her 
brother. ^‘We shall be saved, but I wonder 
how ! ” 

Eleazar’s acquaintance resumed — 

“ It is strange ; it makes one think of our old 
histories in spite of oneself. It is like Elisha and 
his wall of fire.” 

Miriam’s face quivered with emotion. 


Il6 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

“The God of Elisha is living,” she sighed, “and 
surely He is never far off.” 

Eleazar made no reply but a despairing groan, 
and went out to find a safe hiding-place for his 
chests. But when Miriam and he were alone 
together again he said reproachfully — 

Thinkest thou the angels of God will build 
walls of fire around these Gentiles ? As they 
have done unto us so shall it be done unto them.” 

'' I know not,” was Miriam^s reply. “ I was 
thinking of the old words, ‘ Should I not spare 
Nineveh, the great city, wherein are more than six 
score thousand persons that cannot discern between 
their right hand and their left, and also much 
cattle.?’” 

“But that,” said Eleazar, “is in the Book of 
Jonah, a wonderful and mysterious apologue, which 
it is dangerous for the people who know not the 
law, especially for women, to interpret.” 

That evening Ethne reminded Baithene that a 
monk of Tours had given them on the second 
tablet a letter to Lupus, Bishop of Troyes — the 
very man whose prayers, as Eleazar’s acquaintance 
had said, made a wall of fire round the city. 

Eleazar had found the introduction to Bishop 
Anianus of Orleans too satisfactory for him to 
refuse that the captives should make use of this 
second tablet. The next morning, therefore, Ethne 
and Baithene went to the church to present their 
introduction. The good, aged Bishop himself lay 
prostrate before the altar in sackcloth and ashes. 
After a time he rose, lifted his hands in benediction, 
and went forth through the streets at the head of a 


TROYES— HER SAINT AND HER SALVATION. 11/ 

procession of clergy and people, also in penitential 
robes of sackcloth, with ashes on their heads, 
chanting litanies. Ethne and Baithene followed. 
They had been impressed by the power and light 
in the sunken eyes and on the worn and hollow 
face of the Bishop ; but they had little hope of 
getting near the holy man himself, until, as he 
entered his own door, they saw him pause on the 
threshold, that the poor mothers might draw near 
for him to lay his hands on their children and bless 
them. Then Ethne and Baithene ventured to press 
near, and present him with the old monk’s tablet. 
It was at once accepted with a gracious welcome, 
and the brother and sister were led into the house, 
and committed to the care of an aged priest. 

“ Alas ! my children,” he said, I fear you have 
come to the very den of the lion. Attila and the 
Huns are at our doors ; walls and gates we have 
none. This very morning the tramp of the host 
has been heard, and the Bishop is to lead us forth 
in solemn procession to plead with Attila for 
mercy. Perhaps you will help us more by your 
prayers than we can help you.” 

It was indeed too true. The savage cries of the 
horsemen, the heavy grind of the wagons, all the 
signs of the advance of the savage horde, with 
which they had grown so terribly familiar during 
the siege of Orleans, were around them again, 
growing louder and louder, nearer and nearer, every 
hour. And there was absolutely no defence ; no 
walls, no garrison, nothing but a multitude of 
unwarlike citizens, with the women and children ; 
absolutely no defence but faith and prayer. 


Il8 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

When the brother and sister returned to Eleazar, 
they found him far more gentle than usual, and 
reproaching himself. 

Miriam, my wife,'’ he said, ‘‘ I have brought you 
all into this den of lions, and I am no Daniel; and 
I had no command to come ! " 

As he spoke, a procession of clergy drew near in 
white robes, and at the head the aged Bishop in 
full sacerdotal vestments. Slowly they advanced, 
chanting the psalms of Eleazars own people, in 
Latin, David’s familiar Miserere, the multitude 
of Thy mercies, blot out my iniquities^ And the 
old Jew reverently bent his head, swept away on 
the tide of prayer. It seemed also as if some 
individual arrow had pierced his own conscience, 
for as the captives followed the procession, and he 
was left alone with his wife, he said to her — 

I had no call to come hither ; no call to make 
slaves of these children ! Miriam, what is driving 
me hither and thither through the earth } Surely 
there is the child ; we shall find her ; we ivill 
ransom her and make her all a child of our house 
has a right to be. It is for her I am striving and 
bargaining, and wandering like Cain to and fro 
through the earth. But is it of the Lord } Or can 
it be that the Adversary is hunting me hither and 
thither by his enchantments 

Then, after some hesitation, Miriam ventured to 
say, in a voice quivering with emotion — 

“ Have you not told me, my beloved, that there 
is an idol, an enchantment, an enchanter, a thing, 
a demon, called Mammon "i ” 

“ It may be,” he replied, with a startled look of 


TROYES — HER SAINT AND HER SALVATION. II9 

horror, as one half-waking from a nightmare. 
'‘But however that may be, this Bishop has the 
look of an Elijah. Let us go in and pray 

Slowly the procession moved on with the Bishop 
at its head, and closely following him, a young 
deacon called Nemorius, clasping to his breast the 
book of the Gospels bound in gold. Numbers 
of the townspeople were following. Ethne re- 
turned to Miriam, but Baithene was swept on in 
the tide. 

Close on the outskirts of the town they en- 
countered the advance-guard of the host pressing 
on to the plunder of the city. The nimble brown 
men with the swift horses, which were as part of 
themselves, wheeled around them. Javelins were 
raised to hurl at them, spears were pointed, with 
the fierce howfs and cries which seemed to have 
caught the tone of the wild beasts of the desert. 
Nor were these aimless, unmeaning menaces. Even 
while the procession advanced towards the enemy, 
Attila had given the order to cut them all down. 
Nemorius the young deacon fell pierced to death, 
with his golden Gospels still clasped to his breast ; 
and many sank wounded or dead beside him. It 
seemed as if there would be a general massacre. 
But still the old Bishop Lupus pressed on, until he 
reached Attila ; and then, something in the vener- 
able figure and the worn, aged face, with its fire 
undimmed by the seventy years, something in 
the man himself, seemed suddenly to impress the 
fierce and haughty conqueror who had insulted 
emperors without fear, and had destroyed cities and 
devastated provinces without mercy. 


1 20 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

Attila gave order for the carnage to cease, and at 
a nod, at a look from him, javelins were lowered, 
spears were couched, the eager war-horses were 
held in check, and the procession with the white- 
haired Bishop in his priestly robes stood still, 
surrounded by the checked host of foes, confront- 
ing the Desolator of nations. 

It was as if a raging sea had been arrested at full 
tide, each foaming wave frozen into stillness in the 
curve of its breaking. 

What was said in that wonderful interview can 
scarcely be known. Few who could understand 
were near enough to hear. 

It was rumoured afterwards that Attila himself 
claimed to be the Scourge of God,'' and that the 
Bishop with lofty meekness replied — 

“ If thou art the Scourge of God, chasten us as 
much as the Hand that holds thee permits." 

Probably this was merely a dramatic echo in 
words of the deed done. Whatever was said, what 
was felt and done cannot be denied. 

Troyes was no Rome guarded by the glory of 
centuries and the magic of a great name. It was 
an unhistorical, unwalled town, such as Attila had 
burned and sacked by scores. The Bishop bore 
no great title such as he could have heard of ; it 
was simply the man, the saint, the man of God 
that moved him, — moved him not merely to turn 
aside from an intended enterprise, but to curb his 
fierce hosts in the full career of plunder and 
slaughter ; a host that was not composed only of his 
own people, but of the fiercer and more lawless ele- 
ments of the Gothic tribes, and of Alans and Vandals. 


TROYES — HER SAINT AND HER SALVATION. 1 21 


One stipulation only the leader of that savage host 
made ; and the stipulation was almost a greater 
tribute to the Bishop’s character and influence 
than the granting of his request. Attila said he 
would spare the city on one condition, that the 
aged Bishop should leave it and accompany him 
and his hordes to the Rhone. Perhaps he meant it 
as a test of the saint’s courage and sincerity. If 
so, they stood the test. The old man yielded 
himself up to Attila, and the procession, with the 
grateful citizens, returned to the rescued city. 
Perhaps some of them felt that they owed their 
deliverance to a double sacrifice : the aged Bishop, 
who offered up his life amidst the perils of the 
hostile army ; and the young deacon, who had 
laid it down pierced by their spears. 

Silently Baithene re-entered the dwelling where 
his sister awaited him with Eleazar and Miriam. 

“Has anything come of this bearding of the 
lion ? ” Eleazar asked. 

“ Everythingl' Baithene replied. “ The Bishop 
has given himself up to the Huns, and the city is 
saved.” 

In the lion’s den!” said Eleazar, bowing his 
head and hiding his face. 

“ With Him Who can stop the mouths of the 
lions,” murmured Miriam. 

“ With the Creator of the lions 1 ” said Ethne. 
“ He made everything good, they told us in 
Ireland. Even the lions 1 Even Attila is not 
only a destroyer.” 

Afterwards, when they were alone, she said to 
Baithene — 


122 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


‘'Who can tell what even Attila might have 
been if the Christians he met had all been saints ! 

“He seems to have a wonderful eye for a saint/' 
Baithene admitted. “ But we must pray hard for 
the Bishop." 

“ I do not believe Attila will hurt a hair of his 
head," rejoined Ethne. “ He is, after all, nothing 
worse than a Hun, and I cannot forget the poor 
ugly brown head that I had to hold, or the kind 
dying eyes that looked into mine." 




CHAPTER XI. 

A FIELD OF SLAUGHTER, AND A FOUNTAIN OF 
YOUTH. 

O the flood of destruction was turned 
aside from Troyes, and swept on to 
the deadly encounter with the armies 
of Rome and her allies, under the 
command of Aetius the great Roman general, and 
Theodoric the Gothic king, in the Catalaunian 
plains near Chalons. 

The great shock of the battle of the nations 
(the Hunnenschlacht) came at last. 

It was said that before the battle, Attila had a 
solemn consultation in his tent with his augurs, 
and by various methods of divination they warned 
him of disaster, but said that a great leader of his 
foes would fall on the field ; and that Attila, 
believing that this leader must be Aetius, deemed 
that the loss of thousands would be compensated 
by the death of that one. Probably personal 
resentment also may have entered into his dislike 
of Aetius, once a hostage among the Huns, and 
afterwards their ally. 



124 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

But whether the battle was forced on him or 
chosen by him, and how it began, none seem able 
to say. The confusion that hangs about the story 
of great battles does not begin with gunpowder ; 
blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke, and the dust 
of the arena hang in blinding clouds around them 
all. And this conflict on the plains between Troyes 
and Chalons was one of the great critical battles of 
the world. A little shallow runnel of water, it was 
said, became a great torrent of blood on that fatal 
field. Three hundred thousand were left there 
dead. “ A battle ruthless, manifold, immense, 
obstinate,'’ fought on from the afternoon into the 
night. In the morning after it the Romans and the 
Gothic allies, left in possession of the field, strewn 
with corpses, saw that the Huns did not return to 
the fight, but kept encamped behind their wagons, 
where they had fled for shelter. This was all the 
proof they had of victory. The battle was scarcely 
won ; but the Huns were gone, and they were 
suffered to go unpursued. Gone as it proved for 
ever; from Gaul and all Teutonic Europe. But of 
that no man then could be sure. 

Marius wrote on the morrow of the battle — “ The 
messengers are to start for Rome at once. Fortun- 
ately only my left hand is wounded, and that but 
slightly, and so I can write. The battle is won ; or 
at least it is over. The battle-field and the dead 
are left to us. The Huns are behind their wagons. 
Theodoric, the brave old Gothic king, is slain. 
Some say Attila would have been content to 
lose the battle if Aetius had fallen, as he thought 
the augurs promised. But Aetius lives and 


A FIELD OF SLAUGHTER. 


125 


diplomatizes still. And the heroic old Goth is 
dead — a hero and king to the last. Unmindful of 
his threescore years, I saw him galloping to and 
fro, cheering on his people to the fight, when he 
was thrown from his horse, and fell under the feet 
of the advancing horsemen. They are searching 
now for his body among the heaps of slain who 
died around their king. 

“They say Attila in leading on his hosts bade 
them despise our Roman forces with the ancient de- 
fensive array of the shields locked into the testudo, 
and make their onset on the young nations who 
could not only defend themselves but assail. ‘ Cut 
the sinew and the limbs will relax,’ he' cried. ‘ Him 
who is fated to conquer no dart will touch ; him 
who is doomed to die Fate will find amidst the 
sloth of peace.’ He might have spared his taunts 
to us Romans. Romans or barbarians, who could 
say who fought best when all fought with the hope 
of beating back the flood of destruction for ever, 
and with the certainty that if it were not beaten 
back, it would overwhelm them all ? It was no 
conflict between machines and battering-rams and 
Roman walls, but between flesh and blood, fierce 
and desperate men fighting hand to hand for life 
or death. They say three hundred thousand lives 
were lost upon this fatal field ; three hundred 
thousand souls there passed away — whence or 
whither, who can say ? Every kind of weapon 
was there — ^javelin, spear, huge Tartar bow, Roman 
shield and sword ; amidst the din of every kind of 
language. Never, I should think, could confusion 
have been greater ; and to confusion of tongues, 


126 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

before the battle ended, was added the bewilder- 
ment of darkness. We began at three o’clock, and 
the conflict raged on through the night. Aetius 
himself strayed in the dark amongst the Huns, 
whose language, fortunately for him, he knew. And 
yet, in spite of the confusion of tribes and tongues, 
the issue is clear, clearer I think than the issue of 
battles can often be. For it is, at bottom, the con- 
flict of civilization with barbarism, of hope with 
despair, of building with destroying, of order with 
anarchy, of heathenism with Christianity, of life 
with death ; and in the main, civilization, order, 
hope, Christianity, life, have won the day. 

‘'At this moment I hear the death-wail of the 
Goths around the body of their king. They 
think they have rescued the royal corpse from the 
heap of slain beneath which it lay. 

“ Still the Huns keep behind their wagons. Attila 
their king is among them ; but around him there 
is no shout as for a king. 

“The field is won; the host of the Huns, the 
great flood of devastation, is ebbing back to its 
deserts. God grant it be for ever. 

“ It seems decided that we make no pursuit, but 
let the flood ebb away beyond the Rhone. To- 
morrow I go southward with a detachment to 
Troyes. Farewell.” 

* * 5 !^ * * 

All the day of the great battle tidings kept 
flowing in to Troyes. None ventured beyond the 
city, for the battle was said to be raging not more 
than five miles away. There was indeed no roll of 
the thunder of guns ; but the echo of distant 


A FIELD OF SLAUGHTER. 12/ 

tumult came faintly now and then through the 
hush of the July afternoon. 

Troyes knew that her Bishop was there. Who 
could say that if the battle were lost, vengeance 
might not fall on his head ? But if Attila won, 
a// was lost. 

All day prayer went up ceaselessly in the 
churches, but mostly in silence, or following the 
low litanies of the choir, so heavy was the weight 
of suspense. 

A confusion of contradictory rumours reached 
the city : first it was reported that the Romans 
had won the height on which all might depend ; 
then that Theodoric the great King of the Visi- 
goths was slain. After that fell the darkness. 
And through the night people took refuge in the 
churches, and silent prayer went up ; until at 
last, in the quiet dawn of the July morning, 
came the news that the battle was over, that 
Attila and his Huns had fled behind their wagons, 
and that the Roman army held the field. Soon 
came the further news that Attila and his host 
were retreating towards the Rhone, carrying Bishop 
Lupus with them. The city and the land were 
saved from the destroyer, but who could answer 
for the saintly life so freely offered up for the 
people ? 

To Ethne and Baithene the city, in a sense they 
themselves, seemed orphaned afresh ; and in their 
different ways and words, the little group of four, 
Irish and Hebrew, poured out their hearts together 
for the prophet still in the den of lions. 

There was much to be done for the crippled and 


128 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


wounded who were borne in from time to time 
from the battle. Baithene went out with the 
wagons to carry them in ; Ethne was again 
among the deaconesses and consecrated virgins, 
succouring the wounded. 

Late in the evening Baithene came with a cart to 
the dQor of the house where Eleazar was sojourn- 
ing ; he asked to be allowed to bring in a young 
Roman officer who had recognized him. True to 
the hospitality of their race and their religion, 
Eleazar and Miriam would not refuse. Was not 
Abraham, “ the father of the faithful,’’ also the 
“father of guests”.^ Had he not received the 
heathen stranger into his house ? yet had not the 
Almighty been more merciful than Abraham, 
rebuking the patriarch for not tolerating the 
imperfect worship of his heathen guest ? The 
Romans had indeed destroyed Jerusalem, but 
this wounded Roman must be welcomed as a 
guest from God, and the guest-chamber was made 
ready for him. 

The stranger was Marius, whose wounds were 
more severe than he had chosen to report in his 
letters to his family. 

For the first day he lay quite still, weak from 
loss of blood ; but Miriam’s homely skill in nursing 
and preparing food for the sick proved of good 
service, and on the third morning he was able to 
creep out with Baithene and Ethne to the church. 
On the way they told him of the rescue of Troyes 
from the plunder of Attila’s host through the inter- 
cession of Lupus, and how the aged Bishop had 
given himself up to the Huns for his people. 


A FIELD OF SLAUGFITER. 1 29 

By degrees the whole story of the Irish captives 
became clear to him : the baptism by Patrick, the 
father s rank as a chieftain among his people, their 
capture by British pirates, their hearing of the 
letter of Patrick to Coroticus, their purchase by 
Eleazar the Jew, their interview with the friendly 
monk at Tours, and his letters to Bishop Anianus 
of Orleans and Bishop Lupus of Troyes. 

His heart went out to them as captive nobles, in 
their own land of a house as ancient as his own ; as 
in unjust bondage to a Hebrew, yet so far legally 
his, that except legally they could not be set free ; 
and above all as Christians, Catholic Christians of 
the old faith, yet in some way of the old faith in a 
new way, so fervent, and simple, and unaware of 
all the controversies that had for many worn its 
poetry into prose ; glowing with a Christian faith 
that seemed in some unspeakable way steeped anew 
in the freshness of dawn, baptized into the death 
and life of Christ the Lord. So, during those 
days in the house together, the sweet household 
way and gracious services of Ethne stole into his 
inmost heart and took possession of it before he 
was aware. She was like his mother, yet unlike, as 
the rose of dawn to the tender glow of evening. 

At last the day came when Marius had to leave 
with his detachment. The day before he left he 
was trying to console Ethne for the loss of Bishop 
Lupus. 

“ He is not lost,’' she said, with a triumphant 
smile ifi her dark-grey eyes. ‘‘ Attila will not harm 
him.” 

“Your heart has room even for the Hun,” he 

I 


130 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


replied, remembering his first sight of her beside 
the dying boy at Orleans. 

“ The Huns are terrible heathen, I fear,’’ she said, 
“ but they do seem to know the saints of God when 
they see them. At least they are not what Patrick 
calls apostate Christians.” 

“ No,” he replied, very gravely. Attila does 
seem to recognize a saint ; and, alas ! he has seen 
so many apostate or unworthy Christians. Think 
of Chrysaphius, the minister of the Emperor of the 
East, trying to bribe Attila’s own ambassadors and 
friends, and to assassinate him treacherously; and 
think of Attila finding it out, yet, when the embassy 
charged with the base project came to him in his 
camp beyond the Danube, being magnanimous 
enough to distinguish between the villains who 
planned the treachery, and the envoys who were 
sent to carry it out without knowing what they were 
doing. It was not like an ordinary savage to let 
one of that embassy escape.” 

Ethne sighed. 

“ How indeed was Attila to know that to 
be a Christian means to love good and hate 
evil ? The Huns are not devils ; for the devils did 
wrong when they knew what they were doing. And 
how were the Huns to know.? And even if they 
were devils,” she added, ‘‘ Patrick has taught us the 
Name before which the devils fly.” 

In the Creed .? ” he said. 

In the Creed,” she replied, and in Patrick’s own 
hymn.” 

“What is Patrick’s hymn .? ” he asked. 

“ I thought all Christians knew Patrick’s hymn,” 


A FIELD OF SLAUGHTER. I31 

she said, with some surprise, and she began to 
chant softly some of her beloved Irish lorica and 
“ breastplate.’’ 

‘‘ But I do not know your language,” he said. 

Ethne* translated — “ ‘ Christ at my right hand, at 
my left ; Christ in the fort, in the battle, on the sea ; 
by the way, at the end.’ Is it not sure to be so 
with all Christians Is it not sure, to be so with 
the holy Bishop Lupus } ” 

He hesitated a moment, and then said — 

“ Christ our Lord suffers some very hard things 
to happen to His Christians.” 

I know. We were told so,” she answered. 

He said so. But the hymn says He is with us on 
all the ways, however rough ; and certainly always 
at the end, however dark.” 

He was silent. Her faith and hope were stealing 
like sunshine into his heart, but, like the sunshine, 
silently. 

“ I am going with my soldiers,” he said, after 
a pause, ‘‘ to keep them from oppressing the poor 
peasants. The Huns have robbed them of nearly 
everything, and an army of hungry men following 
the Huns must not be suffered to take the little 
that is left.” 

‘‘I know,” she said, with a flash of quick 
sympathy; ‘Hhe Huns are not the only robbers. 
The people seem to suffer everywhere, from every 
one. Baithene has heard them say the misery was 
there long before the Huns came. There are the 
tax-gatherers and the slave-masters everywhere.” 

“ Everywhere,” Marius replied, ‘‘and always.” 

“ And you will help the oppressed and save them 


132 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


from the oppressors } she said, her whole face light- 
ing up, the royal heart going forth to the poor and 
the down-trodden. 

‘‘ I will try,^’ he said ; ‘‘ I am going back to 
Rome.” 

‘‘ They are taking us there also,’’ she said ; and 
she parted from him with a smile which was to him 
as an illumination from heaven. 

He wrote to his sister — The wound was worse 
than I knew. But T have had tender care and 
nursing in the house of a Jew called Eleazar, from 
his wife Miriam, and from two young Christian 
captives, and I am quite strong again. And, 
beloved, I think I have found the Fountain of Youth 
at last ; and I hope may bring some drops to thee 
also. Tell my mother of these two young, Christian 
captives, son and daughter of a king or chieftain 
from the farthest West, the Scottish-land, Hibernia, 
the island Rome never conquered. They were 
kidnapped by British pirates, and bought by 
Eleazar, an aged Jew, who with his wife Miriam 
lives at Rome, and is taking them thither. They 
must be ransomed. . Farewell.” 



CHAPTER XII. 

ST. PATRICK’S CHILDREN IN ST. LEO’S CITY. 

REAT was the exultation in Rome at 
the news of the victory on the Catalau- 
nian plains, the defeat of Attila, and 
his retreat with his Huns to their camps 
beyond the Danube. 

The echo of the triumph soon reached the quiet 
portico of the palace on the Aventine, where 
Damaris and Lucia were sitting together in the 
hush of a July noon. Fabricius came in with the 
news. 

Attila is in retreat ; there has been a battle, 
with the slaughter of hundreds of thousands, and 
here is a letter for thee.” 

It was the one Marius had written from the battle- 
field. In a few days followed the second from 
Troyes. It was to Lucia, and she read it as they 
sat together in the quiet evening. 

“ ‘ The wound was worse than I knew.’ ” 

“ I felt sure of that,” said the mother. 

“‘But I have had tender care and nursing in the 



134 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


house of a Jew called Eleazar, from his wife Miriam 
and two young Christian captives.^ ” 

“In the house of a Jew!'’ exclaimed Fabricius, 
doubtfully. “ God grant they dealt fairly by him. 
The Jews have many wrongs to avenge on us and 
ours.” 

Lucia read on — “ ‘ I am quite strong again/ " and 
then she paused a moment before she proceeded, 
“ ‘ I think I have found the Fountain of Youth, and 
I hope to bring some drops home to thee.’ ” 

“ A curious mixture of religions,” said Fabricius. 
“A Jew, and the old Pagan fountain. What can 
he mean ? ” 

“ He means, I suppose,” said Lucia, “ that the 
world around us seems rather old, and that he has 
found among these new people some freshness of 
new life.” 

“ I understand,” said Damaris. 

Lucia read on — “‘Tell my mother of the two 
young Christian captives, the son and daughter of a 
king or chieftain from the farthest West, the land 
of the Scots, Hibernia, the island Rome never con- 
quered. They were kidnapped by British pirates, 
and bought by the old Jew Eleazar, who, with his 
wife Miriam, lives at Rome, and is taking them 
.thither. They must be ransomed.’ ” • 

“ It seems a very wild story,” said Fabricius. 
“ Are you quite sure it is from Marius 

“Quite sure,” said Lucia; and she resumed, 
“ There is a postscript. He thinks the sister would 
be delightful to me, and that the brother would be 
invaluable to our father on his lands among the 
Sabine hills. There is also a dog, a deer-hound of 


ST. Patrick’s children in st. leg’s city. 135 

the purest Scottish breed, that he thinks would be 
priceless for the chase.” 

A wonderful treasure-trove, in good sooth,” 
said Fabricius, rather grimly. dog, two 

captives to ransom, and a Fountain of Youth.” 

Afterwards he said to his wife when they were 
alone, Dilectissima, understandest thou what this 
means ? Art thou ready to have thy youth 
renewed by a daughter-in-law from the Scottish 
wilds ? ” 

‘‘ We will wait and see,” she replied. “ Marius is 
no dreamer. If he thinks he has found a treasure, 
I believe he has.” 

‘'The Scots are many of them Pelagian heretics,” 
Fabricius replied, not without malice. 

“ Then we must bring them under the instruction 
of our Pope Leo,” she said. “We will wait and 
see.” 

They had not long to wait. The very next 
evening Damaris and Lucia were in their lectica, 
with its purple curtains and golden lattices, on the 
great road leading northward, when they met a 
little company of four, walking beside two strong, 
heavily-laden mules. The old man ^ who led the 
way, walking alone, had the dark, Oriental colour- 
ing and aquiline features which they recognized as 
Hebrew. Behind him walked two women, with 
veils drawn around the head and shoulders, one 
dark and stooping slightly with age, the other tall 
and young and fair, with a sweet light in the grey 
eyes which met those of Damaris. Behind them 
came a fair, athletic young man, holding a power- 
ful deer-hound in leash. 


136 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


Damaris and Lucia looked significantly at each 
other. They would have followed the strangers, 
but their horses had suddenly changed their pace, 
and were galloping towards the hills, rocking the 
heavy carriage (or highly-decorated wagon) from 
side to side. The mother and daughter had not 
a doubt that, as in a momentary flash of lightning, 
they had seen the group described in Marius’ letter. 
As they drove on they met a troop of the slaves 
of the Imperial household. 

Meantime in the opposite direction the little 
company they had met entered the gate of the 
city, and were passed by the same troop of the 
Imperial household. 

The officer who was at the head of the band of 
slaves seemed struck by the four travellers, so 
contrasted in types of face and figure, and yet so 
evidently belonging to each other. Especially he 
fixed his eyes on the fair face of Ethne, the 
athletic form of Baithene, and the dog of the 
much-prized Irish breed. After he had passed 
them he turned back, and asked Eleazar where he 
lived, and if the dog was to be purchased, and 
said he might look in some day and inquire 
about it. 

Something in the officer’s look and bearing made 
Ethne look down and draw closer to Miriam, 
and Baithene look up defiantly and throw his arm 
around the dog, whilst the dog pricked up his ear-s, 
and gave a suspicious low growl. 

When they reached Eleazar’s lodging at the top 
of a tall house on the further side of the Tiber, 
where many of his countrymen congregated, and 


ST. PATRICK’S CHILDREN IN ST. LEO’S CITY. 1 37 

had separated into their different rooms for the 
night, Ethne said to her brother — 

‘‘ Have you the tablet the Roman soldier at 
Troyes gave us for his mother and father, who live 
in a palace on one of these hills ? ” 

“ Surely,” he said ; “ why do you ask ? ” 

I can scarcely say why,” she answered, with a 
shiver. But this great Rome seems to me lonelier 
than the sea, and stranger than our first step into 
a strange land, and more like a den of lions than 
besieged Orleans or the camp of the Huns. The 
people look at us so strangely, as if we were 
foreign animals, or pieces of merchandise for sale.” 

“ And we are ! ” moaned Baithene. 

‘'Let us say the paternoster and Patrick’s 
hymn,” she rejoined, “and try and go to sleep.” 
But they slept little. 

Nor did Miriam and Eleazar sleep much better. 

“ Dost thou know that man with the sinister 
face,” she said, “who spoke to thee about the 
' dog to-day } ” 

“ No,” he replied, “ save that he is of the Imperial 
household, and must not be offended.” 

“ He must be escaped^' she replied decidedly. 
“ It is not the dog only that he wants, and he 
looks a son of Belial. The Imperial household is 
said to be a sink of iniquity ; we must never sell 
these children into that.” 

He was silent ; heart and conscience were with 
her, but he murmured sullenly — 

“ I told thee these Gentile strangers were no 
merchandise for us.” 

“ The God of the fatherless sent them to us,” 


138 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


she replied ; and our own child is fatherless and 
motherless ; and if we suffer God’s orphans to be 
ruined, how are we to ask Him to care for our 
own ? ” 

“We are no princes now,” he answered, “to 
have young men and maidens in our service, and 
beasts of the chase. What would you do ? ” 

“ They have a tablet from that young Roman 
officer,” she said. “ A letter to his family in a 
palace on the Aventine.” 

“ What of that ? ” he grumbled. 

“ I will go to-morrow,” she said, “ with the maiden, 
to see the lady on the Aventine, the young Roman 
noble’s mother, and tell her all. Perchance she 
will have compassion on these Christian captives, 
and help them and us.” 

“ Thou wilt do what seemeth thee best,” he 
rejoined, in a tone of oppressed acquiescence. “If 
we are ruined, we are ruined ; and the All-Merciful 
have mercy on thee and our lost child.” 

Miriam, having gained her point, was too wise to 
prolong the debate and imperil the victory, which 
was, she well knew, the victory of his own con- 
science, by the most brilliant or devout retort. 

So the next morning early she gently tapped 
at the door of the rooms where the young captives 
were, and said — 

“ Put on thy raiment quietly, my daughter, and 
bring the tablet the young Roman gave thee, and 
come with me, and let thy brother and the dog 
follow close behind.” 

In the dusk of the morning they crossed the 
Tiber, and gliding along the silent quays at the 


ST. PATRICK’S CHILDREN IN ST. LEO’S CITY. 1 39 

foot of the Aventine, climbed from their level 
between the walls of the vineyard and palace 
gardens till they reached the gate of the house of 
Fabricius. 

Eleazar came after them, and stood near them at 
the gate, in the shadow, a little apart. One or two 
slaves were stirring, and seemed at first determined 
not to heed them, but in a few minutes the steward 
of the household appeared, and demanded what 
they wanted at that unseasonable hour. 

We want thee to bear this epistle instantly to 
thy lady,” said Miriam ; it is from her son. He 
gave it us at the city of Troyes, far away in Gaul, 
to bring hither to her.” 

The steward looked doubtfully at the group, but 
nevertheless accepted the tablet, went quickly into 
the house, and in a few minutes returned with his 
young mistress. Lucia’s smile reassured them. 

Does the matter press ? ” she asked. 

It presses sore,” was Miriam’s reply. “ A few 
hours’ delay may prove the ruin of two innocent 
lives.” 

Lucia went instantly to her mother’s room. 

Mother,” she said, it is the people we met 
yesterday, the people who nursed Marius, with a 
letter from him.” 

Together they glanced at the few words in the 
letter from Marius, commending the fugitives to 
the care of his father and mother. In a few minutes 
Damaris and Lucia received the strangers in the 
atrium. Miriam asked to see Damaris apart, and few 
words of explanation were needed between them. 

“ My husband purchased these captives on the 


140 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

coast of Gaul/' she said. They are noble. They 
were taken by pirates. They are Christians. They 
are good. Lady, save them from becoming slaves 
in the household of the Emperor. One of his 
people has seen them, and is coming, I fear, to 
purchase them to-day." 

It must not be/' said Damaris. What would 
you have us dp ? " 

“ Ransom them, purchase them, lady ; make 
them your own. They belong to your Christ ! " 

‘‘You are not Christian.^" Damaris asked 
courteously. 

“My family are of the tribe of Judah — of the 
family of your Christ. . Christians robbed us of 
all, of our only child. But I believe *your Christ 
was good." 

Damaris looked into the dark, sad. Oriental eyes 
and read much there. After a moment’s pause 
she took Miriam's hand. 

“You have pity on these captives," she said 
tenderly, “as your great prophets commanded 
you ; you know the heart of a captive. You have 
pity on this maiden for the sake of your own dead 
maiden child." 

“ Our daughter .is not dead," exclaimed Miriam, 
with a tremulous voice. “ But she is a captive, 
perhaps a slave, we know not where. We search 
for her year after year. We pray for her night 
and day. There is One Who lives and hears." 

“ One Who sees and loves!" responded Damaris ; 
“Who sees thee caring for these His children, and 
I believe brings them through thee to me. I will 
do all I can." 


ST. PATRICK’S CHILDREN IN ST. LEO’S CITY. I4I 

She went straight to her husband, who was in 
consultation with his steward, in his room of 
business. After dismissing the attendant, she said, 

“ Fabricius, these captives, the friends of Marius, 
who helped to save his life, are here. We shall 
have to ransom them at once.” 

My lady is imperious,” he replied, smiling, 
and must of course be obeyed. But where are 
the revenues ? The taxes and imposts for these 
wars are ruinous. Only just now the forester from 
our farms on the Sabine hills has been telling me 
the slaves will not work. They are probably 
meditating another flight to the barbarians, as in 
the days of Alaric, and everything is going to 
ruin.” 

We must sell some of our land,” she said. 

“ No one will buy,” he replied. They say Attila 
the Hun will soon return to avenge his defeat and 
ravage the country.” 

‘‘ I will part with my jewels,” she said. 

He made a deprecatory gesture, and said — • 

I was but pointing out to thee we were not 
Olympians to command the clouds, nor, alas ! of 
those who found the tribute-money miraculously 
stored in the mouths of fishes. What thou com- 
mandest must certainly be done. But what can 
then be done with the captives we shall have to 
see.” 

They returned together to the atrium, and 
Fabricius, addressing Baithene, said gravely — 

‘‘ My son writes that thou art a prince in thine 
own land. I fear we have too many princes here 
already to have much room for more.” 


142 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

I am no prince now,” said Baithene, raising his 
frank, fearless eyes to Fabricius, at least I have 
no kingdom and no subjects ; and what we call a 
kingdom in our country would perhaps seem but a. 
wilderness to thee.” 

There was no complaining in his tone, simply 
the acknowledgment of an unpleasant fact ; and 
no defiance in his look, only a kind of princely 
sense that nothing could rob him of his birthright, 
or change what he was in himself, or prevent his 
conquering circumstances by making the best of 
them. 

The old Roman patrician was touched, he felt 
he had met an equal ; but all he said was — 

Thy dog, at all events, seems a* prince of 
dogs.” 

And Bran acknowledged the compliment by an 
acquiescent wag of his tail. 

Then turning to Miriam, Fabricius said — ‘‘ I 
would see thy husband.” 

‘‘ I will fetch him at once,” she replied. And 
without another word she went and brought in 
Eleazar, who was still keeping guard outside the 
gate. 

Fabricius took the old man to his private room, 
and as a matter of course there was some bargain- 
ing between them. The Roman noble pleaded 
with much truth the badness of the times ; the 
Jewish merchant pleaded with much plausibility 
the poverty of his race, and his own especial losses 
on this purchase. But the arrangement was soon 
concluded ; and Eleazar and Miriam returned 
alone to the tall houses beyond the Tiber, leaving 


ST. PATRICK’S CHILDREN IN ST. LEO’S CITY. 143 

Ethne, Baithene, and the dog in the palace on the 
Aventine. 

As Miriam went, she bowed with an Oriental 
gesture, and kissed the hand of Damaris. 

‘‘ Your Christ is good,” she murmured with a 
quivering voice, '‘and so are some of His Chris- 
tians.” 

“ Our Christ is yours ! ” said Damaris, in a low 
voice. 

Miriam made no reply for a moment, and then 
with passionate intensity she said — 

“ Pray to your God and ours, that if your Christ 
is ours we may know it in time, I and my husband, 
and our captive child whom we have lost.” 




CHAPTER XIIL 

SUNSET MEETING DAWN. 

HEN Eleazar and Miriam had left, 
Fabricius took Baithene and the dog 
into quarters of their own ; whilst 
Damaris led Ethne within into her 

own rooms. 

“ My child,” she said, you have been used to 
be served by others, not to serve. The change 
must have been hard.” 

The service of our own people was always 
willing,” replied Ethne, the colour deepening on 
her fair cheek. ‘^And I have tried to make my 
service willing ; and then it is not hard.” 

‘‘You have heard of the Lord of all. Who 
became servant of all ? ” said Damaris, tenderly ; 
and Ethne replied, her whole face lighting up — 

“ Patrick told us of the King of men, Who saw 
that all men were in bondage, and gave His life a 
ransom for all ; and he told us how He came to 
serve us all, and that His sacrifice and His service 
were all willing. And our Patrick was himself 
once a slave, and knows what it means. Besides,” 



SUNSET MEETING DAWN. I4S 

she added, it could never be hard to serve 
Miriam, she was so good to us, and so sad.’’ 

“ Her name is Miriam Damaris asked. 

Yes,” said Ethne ; “ and I thought that name 
was the same as the blessed Mother’s name, and 
that made it sweeter to serve her.” 

Damaris took the girl’s hand and pressed it to 
her heart as she replied — 

“ Thy Miriam looks very worn and sad.” 

“Yes; and that, of course, makes me love her 
more. She has lost her only child, and she does not 
seem to have quite found our Christ.” 

‘‘Child,” said Damaris, “our Christ is everything 
to thee ? ” 

“Yes,” replied Ethne, simply, “He is everything. 
We are Christians.” 

“Could you not tell Miriam of Him.^” said 
Damaris. 

“I tried,” was Ethne’s answer; “and she wept, 
and said she saw I had found the Messiah, who is 
called the Christ, and that it gave me a wonderful 
joy. There was no need to say much. She saw. 
But,” she added, “ Patrick told us there are two 
Testaments of God. And Miriam seems only to 
know the first, the beginning ; she has not learned 
the end yet.” 

“ The Testaments of God are all your learning ? ” 
Damaris said. 

“ They are the only books we know,” Ethne 
replied. 

“Happy child,” said Damaris, “to have had 
only the fountains to drink from.” 

“But here, where the fountains have been over- 

K 


146 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

flowing, they say, so long,” replied Ethne, ‘'we are 
hoping to learn so much ! And then^ if ever we 

go home again- ” But there she stopped ; the 

words would not come. 

“You have a home, father and mother?” 
Damaris asked. 

“ We had',' sobbed Ethne ; “and oh ! I trust we 
have still ! If only we could know ! Patrick said 
in his letter, that the pirates killed many when 
they took us captive ; and Dewi, the British sailor, 
who was one of them, promised to go home and 
tell our people of us, and then to come back and 
find us out, and tell us of them. And if God helps 
him he will.” 

Damaris laid the fair head on her shoulder, and 
gradually the whole story came out. They were 
interrupted by a bell sounding from the oratory 
which had belonged to Marcella and the Ecclesia 
Domestica of the Aventine ; and they all went 
thither, and knelt together for the morning prayer. 

Afterwards, while the brother and sister had 
their morning meal together, Damaris and Fabricius 
consulted what should be done with them. It was 
clear from what Miriam had said, and Baithene 
confirmed, that the eyes of one of the officers of 
the Emperor s household had rested covetously on 
the three, that is, the youth, the maiden, and the 
dog, and that they must as little as possible for 
the present be seen in public together. 

It was decided, therefore, that Fabricius should 
take Baithene and the dog to a country house 
belonging to the family among the Sabine hills, 
near Nero’s villa of Sublacum (Subiaco), whilst 


SUNSET MEETING DAWN. 


147 


Ethne should remain with Damaris and Lucia on 
the Aventine. To restore them to their home in 
the far-off Western isle, while so much of the 
intervening continent was ravaged by barbarian 
tribes, or infested by Imperial armies and officials, 
often worse than the barbarians, was at present 
out of the question. The safest course for the 
captives, it was concluded, was to treat them as 
part of the property and household of Fabricius, 
under such protection as his patrician and sena- 
torial rank could give. This decision was com- 
municated to the brother and sister as the only 
possible course to be taken at the moment. 

‘‘But peril is nothing to us,’' Baithene said 
appealingly, “ if only we could reach our own land 
again.” 

“ It is for your sister that the peril involved in 
such a journey cannot be encountered ! ” Fabricius 
replied. 

“ But surely,” Ethne ventured to plead, “ if it is 
His way, God will guard us in it.” 

“ It is not the Divine way,” rejoined Fabricius, 
with Roman imperiousness. “For it is not onrs 
for you. God has committed you to us, and we 
have to guard you as our own.” 

And Damaris added — 

“ Who knows how soon your friend the British 
sailor may find you out, and bring you tidings 
which may guide us all } ” 

Baithene acknowledged the right of ransom and 
the law of honour, whilst Ethne felt the claim of 
gratitude and the persuasion of hope and loving- 
kindness. And so the two were gathered under 


148 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


the sacred patria potestas of the father of the 
Roman household. 

It was a wonderful time for Ethne, those months 
with Damaris and Lucia. From the limited past of 
her own Irish clan she was suddenly transferred 
into the past of the whole civilized world, Greek 
and Roman, besides the link with the ancient 
East through Miriam, whom she often saw. 

And not less wonderful were those months to 
Damaris and Lucia. It was as if through a cleft in 
the far-off mountain walls of some Norwegian fiord 
they saw the sunset melting into dawn, the fading 
glory of the old world kindling into the fervent 
glow of the new. 

“ I understand what thou hast written,” Lucia 
wrote to Marius, still detained in Gaul. I also 
have found the Fountain of Youth.” 

The past of ancient Rome — Republican, Imperial, 
Pagan, Christian — stood visibly before the young 
Irish girl. On the Capitol, around the Forum, 
throughout the city, still rose the ancient temples, 
despoiled indeed of many of their statues and 
shrines, and no longer devoted to the worship of 
the ancient gods, but still standing, not turned to 
other uses. The temple where the Vestal Virgins 
had kept the fire of Vesta ever burning, the sacred 
hearth-fire of Rome, and the cells where they had 
lived, were still there. Only forty years before, 
the last of the Vestals had cursed, with a curse of 
which most men still believed the power, Serena, 
niece of the great Theodosius, when she dared, in 
the temple on the Capitol, to take the jewelled 


SUNSET MEETING DAWN. 


149 


necklace from the neck of Rhea, Mother of the 
Gods, and place it on her own. The Vestal 
Virgins, the ancient gods and goddesses, all were 
gone, but the sacrilegious Serena, alas ! people still 
said with awe, had been put to a violent death. 

The palaces on the Palatine were still Imperial 
dwellings. The Pantheon was not yet consecrated 
to Christian worship. They were indeed empty of 
shrines and worshippers, those grand old temples; 
but they were still there, whether awaiting the 
return of the old gods, or the consecration of 
Christian worship, or mere destruction, not a few 
still doubted. August presences seemed to many 
still to hover round them, whether good or evil, 
still mighty to avenge if not to save. 

And there stood the Coliseum, a continual 
gathering-place of all Rome, attracted thither day 
by day by the tumultuous excitement of the 
games and races. 

Early one morning Damans took P^thne there. 
With triumph she pointed out how that arena was 
never more to be stained with the blood of martyrs 
or gladiators. Eagerly Ethne drank in the stories 
of the Christian martyrs, rejoicing to go by any 
path to. Christ, fearlessly awaiting the opening of 
the cages of the lions. Especially she delighted 
in the last martyr story of the Coliseum, which had 
closed the gladiatorial games for ever. 

‘‘ I was a little child of seven,’^ Damaris said ; 
“ but I remember to this day how my father came 
back, and told us of the unknown Egyptian monk 
who had suddenly flashed on the world from the 
solitudes of his African deserts, and had stood in 


150 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

the arena between the combatants with outstretched 
arms pleading for the slaughter to cease ; how for 
the moment there was a pause in the onset of the 
gladiators, a hush in the fierce shouts of the 
spectators ; and then a fiercer yell than ever, 
showers of stones hurled at the monk, until he 
fell, crushed to death, until the last Christian 
martyr had fallen at what his martyrdom made 
the last gladiatorial show. The cry of wrong from 
the great city had pierced the monk’s heart 
in his African solitudes, and driven him, alone, 
across desert and sea, to stop it ; and that great 
sacrifice of pity had pierced the heart of the 
Emperor. And so one more great wrong was swept 
out of the world for ever.” 

“ Do all the great wrongs die in that way,” 
asked Ethne, “by some one dying under them } ” 

“The Cross is on our Christian banners!” 
said Damaris. “ Of what wrongs were you" 
thinking ? ” 

“I was thinking of Troyes,” Ethne replied, “of 
the young deacon falling under the spears of the 
Huns, of the aged Bishop Lupus giving himself 
up to Attila, and of the city being saved. And,” 
she added, softly, “ I was thinking also of the great 
wrong of slavery, and of Patrick, who brought the 
freedom of Christ to our country, having been 
himself once a slave.” 

Damaris looked at the girl very tenderly, but 
as if a new light had suddenly dawned on her. 
Slavery was so essential a part of that old civiliz- 
ation, Greek and Roman, that even to her it had 
scarcely occurred that it was anything but an 


SUNSET MEETING DAWN. 151 

inevitable natural evil, like earthquakes and storms ; 
but she said nothing. 

A very close sympathy bound these two to each 
other ; they seemed so often to read each other's 
thoughts, and in doing so to find their own grow 
clearer. Many were the galleries of the past 
through which Damaris led Ethne. The great 
poems of the ancient world were unlocked at her 
touch, one palace chamber after another ; especi- 
ally the great poems of the Iliad and the Odyssey, 
the poems of the Battle and the Wandering. Ethne 
would say they explained so much, since the battles 
and the wanderings seem always there. 

And Lucia would answer — 

Does not that make you sad } 

And Ethne would say — 

“Why should it We have the key, now! We 
know that the wanderings are pilgrimages to the 
home, and the battles may always be victories." 

“ But we cannot always see the victory," Lucia 
said. 

And Ethne — “ How could it be a battle still if 
we did ^ " 

Then there was the story of Prometheus, the 
bound Titan, with its mighty entangled reverber- 
ations of the great revolt and the great redemption. 
So Ethne's world of thought grew into order to the 
music of the great voices. Of the feeble, imitative 
echoes of the present happily she heard little. 

Also in that memorable winter Ethne accom- 
plished the great elementary step of learning to 
read. And the gentle strains of Virgil went deep 
into her heart, as afterwards into the hearts of so 


IS? ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

many of the saints of her own race. Fortunately 
for her there was only one literary language then 
to learn, and it was something to learn Latin as a 
household speech from those to whom it was the 
natural language of their infancy. 

But dearest of all to Ethne was the translation 
of “ the Testaments of God into the vulgar 
tongue by Jerome, the Jerome who had written 
letters to the kindred of Damaris, and had prayed 
and preached in the oratory on the Aventine, where 
they worshipped every day. 

One day Lucia entering Ethne’s chamber found 
her kneeling by a table entirely absorbed in a 
manuscript. 

‘‘ What new treasure have you found } ” Lucia 
asked. 

“ Another of the great poems,” said Ethne, with 
a smile in her luminous eyes. Miriam told me 
something of it. It is about a great chieftain who 
was good to every one, and honoured by his clan 
and all the clans around, and beloved by God ; and 
yet he lost everything, and every one he loved, 
because the devil hated him, and God listened to 
the devil, and seemed to forsake him.” 

“You mean Job,” said Lucia, rather drearily. 
“ We have all heard of the patience of Job.” 

But that is the interest of it,” Ethne said. 
“ He must have been patient really, for God said 
so at the end. But there was no dullness in his 
patience. He said terrible things about the world 
and even about God in his anguish — ^just the 
things that come into every one's heart in great 
anguish.” 


SUNSET MEETING DAWN. I S3 

“So it always seemed to me/’ Lucia observed 
with some hesitation. “But how does that help 
us ? We are not allowed to say such things.” 

“ It is all the help in the world,” said Ethne. 
“That old chieftain could not be untrue. The 
other chiefs preached at him in all his pain and 
anguish, and kept saying, ‘ The world is all right, 
and every one gets what he deserves.’ And Job 
said, ‘The world is anything but right, and people 
don’t get what they deserve.’ And the delight is 
to see that God was pleased not with the chiefs 
who meant to flatter Him by saying His world 
was going on all right, but with poor tortured Job, 
who found fault with it — even, it almost seemed, 
with Himself. We do dare sometimes to say the 
hardest things to those we love best.” 

“But,” said Lucia, coming out with a problem 
which had vexed her in secret long, “how can 
that comfort us ? God did not explain. He only 
said, ‘ I am strong, and wise, and eternal, and you 
are frail and blind, and but for a moment.’ Is that 
any comfort ? ” 

Ethne was silent for a time, and then she said — 

“I suppose it is, if we love Him enough! It 
seems to me God never does explain. But He 
said that poor old chieftain had spoken right for 
Him and understood Him, and He must have 
known. That certainly must have comforted Job. 
And God told Job to make sacrifices for his friends 
who were so pleased with themselves. And it is a 
comfort to have people who are too much pleased 
with themselves set right ; and the greatest comfort 
of all to be able to do good to those who have 


154 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

hurt us. Perhaps also it put the friends right too 
at last/’ 

‘‘ Job had also his riches back, and other children 
instead of those he had lost,” said Lucia. 

I do not see much comfort in that,” said 
Ethne; ‘‘the lost things may be replaced, but we 
always want the same lost people back, not new 
ones.” 

“ Hast thou no room for any new people } ” 
Lucia said. “ Have you no room for us V and she 
clasped Ethne’s hands. 

Ethne returned the caress, but rather paren- 
thetically ; and with a far-off look in the deep grey 
eyes she resumed — 

“ Poor^ old chieftain ! That poem does not seem 
finished ; but we have the end, you know,” she 
added. 

“ The end ! ” said Lucia. “ Where } ” wondering 
if Ethne had discovered a new book of the Holy 
Scriptures in her far country. 

“In the Four Gospels,” said Ethne, “in the 
Cross. We do not need, of course, that God should 
explain Himself. He has sent His Son.” 

The winter passed rapidly away. At first they 
did not venture to take Ethne amongst the great 
congregations in the basilicas ; but occasionally, as 
time went on, and also her Latin grew stronger, 
learned naturally in the every-day speech of the 
home, they took her to some quiet corner of the 
great churches, to hear one of the great sermons of 
Leo ; and so, gradually, the conviction dawned on 
her as she stood among the hushed multitudes, and 


SUNSET MEETING DAWN. 


ISS 


listened to the strong, plain words of the great 
Bishop, that Rome, like Troyes, had also her great 
living saint. The heresies he refuted were indeed 
unknown to her ; to her his eloquent, clear expo- 
sition of the Faith in the Incarnate Lord was but 
an unfolding of what she had been taught in the 
simple creed and hymn of Patrick, guarded, as she 
felt, against foes she knew not ; but guarded by 
simply strengthening wall and buttress of the great 
fortress of truth, within which she had already 
found rest. 

The Christian catacombs also had the deepest 
interest for Ethne ; they never seemed to have any 
gloom for the young girl. The radiance of the 
presence of the Good Shepherd, painted on the 
walls, seemed to make them warm and bright for 
her. The Shepherd with the sheep and lambs 
gathered around his feet, and in one place with 
the lost kid of the goats on His shoulder ; the 
music of the young Orpheus (also on those frescoed 
wajls), in his immortal youth, filled all the silent 
chambers. 

Christ, our Orpheus, is for ever gathering the 
living stones into the Holy City by His music,” 
Damaris said ; “ from the wildernesses of the far 
West, from the ruins of Rome, from the Egyptian 
deserts of Telemachus.” 

‘'And for ever making the world young again,” 
said Lucia ; “as He has now sent you into our old 
world to make it new again for us.” 

“ It does not seem old to me,” said Ethne. 

“How should itV said Lucia. “Does the 
spring-tide ever leave the world old ? Do the 


IS6 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


fountains of living water ever know what drought 
means 

They read to her from the rough old Greek 
letters the inscriptions, ‘‘ In peace^' “ Thou livest^' 
“ Mayest thou live in GodI 

It is the story of the princesses of our race, the 
story of our Ethne the Fair and Fedelma the Ruddy. 
They said to Patrick, ^ Give us to see the Son, our 
Spouse,^ and they received the Eucharist of God, 
and they saw the Son, their Spouse, and they slept 
in peace.” 

Once Miriam took the girl into one of the cata- 
combs of her own people ; and there also she saw 
in the square, strange characters the word which 
Miriam told her meant ‘‘ Peace” in the Hebrew; 
also the dove with the olive branch as in the 
Christian tombs, and the rocky couch or ledge 
like that on which the angels called the Magda- 
lene to look and see where they had laid the Lord. 

‘‘ No more a tomb, but only a night's resting- 
place for us since He laid there,” Ethne said. 

And Miriam answered with mournful hesitation — 

“They said the disciples stole Him away.” 

“They did not steal Him away,” Ethne replied ; 
“nor did He steal away from death! He met 
death and conquered it for us, for all, for ever.” 

For Ethne, nothing was in the realm of death ; 
there was no dead past for her ; back through all 
the ages lived that immortal life of the living 
Word. There was no world of shades for her ; the 
world of the dead had become “ the land of the 
living.” 



CHAPTER XIV. 

ROME AND HER SAINT. 

HILE Ethne was thus becoming at 
home in the Aventine palace, a true 
daughter of the heart to Damaris, 
Baithene had become a stay and 
companion to Fabricius, such as he had scarcely 
known before. Baithene came to them from a 
simpler world than theirs, which seemed to bring 
back to the old Roman the nobleness and simplicity 
of old Rome. These children came to them both 
unperplexed by the confused voices of the later 
civilization, so feeble and so corrupt; and, moreover, 
without weighing on them with the responsibility 
which they felt anxiously with regard to their own 
children. And therefore they could fill up gaps 
and voids in their own life and thought as none 
brought up under the same influences could have 
done. The simpler world of the Sabine farm was 
also home-like to Baithene. 

Of the great empire, so tangled, so chaotic, with 
the germs of a new world no one could then 
foresee struggling into life through the decay of 



IS8 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

the old world crumbling to corruption, he could 
understand little. The miles of pasture and forest, 
the lakes and torrents among those Sabine hills, 
were to him like the hills and valleys of his own 
land. Every day there were trees to be felled, or 
fields to be tilled ; and there was also the chase, 
of the beasts of prey, wolves and bears, with 
Bran in his element as an aide-de-camp. There 
were also men and women to be governed and 
employed. But here came in a dreary difference. 
Instead of men and women bound to him and his 
with the loyalty to chieftainship and the affection 
of kinship, those who had to be governed here 
were all slaves, of many races, linked to each other 
and their owner by no organic tie, but merely as 
mechanical atoms welded together by frost and 
fire. The worst evils of slavery were indeed 
mitigated there. Fabricius and Damaris were 
Christians ; the estate was not too large for the 
servants of the household to be attached personally 
to them, and many of the labourers had wives and 
families held together, as in olden days no slaves 
could be, by the sanctity of Christian marriage. 

The evils of the Latifundia, the enormous farms, 
with the Ergastula, the workhouses inhabited by 
great gangs of celibate slaves under a slave-driver, 
were greatly modified on Fabricius’ land. But 
nevertheless the relations between employer and 
employed were those of slavery ; and whether 
worked out mercifully or not, it was from Roman 
households that forty thousand Gothic slaves had 
fled forty years before to Alaric, at the first chance 
of liberation. 


ROME AND HER SAINT. 


IS9 

Baithene felt, in a dim way, that however rude 
and undeveloped might be the social life in his 
own land, it was living and organic, and there- 
fore capable of growth ; whereas this was a 
mere mechanical conglomeration, always inwardly 
crumbling away, and ready at any blow from 
without to be shattered in a moment into ruin. 
Yet, not being responsible for it himself, and being 
in his small way royal, the largeness of heart and 
the habit of caring for others remained with him, 
so that he contrived to diffuse a good deal of life 
and interest and even gaiety around him, and thus 
greatly to relieve Fabricius. 

When in a few months it was deemed safe for 
Baithene to return to the Aventine with the dog 
and Fabricius, the company of slaves who came 
with them had become eager to render him willing 
service, knowing that he would demand nothing 
but what was right, and that he would give all 
that was possible ; they had also become responsive 
to his gay words and smile, knowing that he had 
not only that light-heartedness which took troubles 
lightly, but also the faculty of flashing into 
lightnings of indignation against injustice and 
wrong. He found his sister also, in her place, the ^ 
depositary of the joys and sorrows of the household, i 
old and young ; both of them having conquered j 
the hearts around them by their old princely 
way of considering what every one needed and | 
liked, and by their new Christian way of ruling, not | 
by dividing but by uniting, of reigning by serving, i 

The return of Fabricius and Baithene brought 
Ethne and the whole family more into the outer 


l6o ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

world. The life of Damaris, loving and natural as 
it was, had become essentially a life of religion ; 
her pleasures were in her works of mercy, visiting 
the sick, helping the destitute, lifting up the fallen 
— services in which Ethne delighted to share. 

“ The world,’' in the Rome of those days, was for 
the most part so undeniably wicked and unlovely, 
its amusements so ugly, its vices so putrefying, 
that to come out of it seemed not merely the only 
safe, but the only cheerful and tolerable road to 
take. And to Lucia and Ethne, the mere gaiety 
of their youth, the beauty of flowers, the mere joy 
of living, singing like birds, dancing like young 
fawns, especially now that they danced and sang 
and lived together, were quite pleasure enough. 

But when Fabricius came there had to be 
entertainments, visits, attentions to and from the 
great houses connected with them ; and this 
necessarily made the position of the Irish captives 
more complicated and difficult. 

It was a great joy to the brother and sister to 
be together again ; and the rapture of Bran (the 
dog) at finding his young mistress again as he 
crouched at her feet, and bounded round her, and 
gravely placed his great paw's on her shoulder, 
expressing his feelings with every possible move- 
ment of tail and ears, and every possible variety 
of bark, and cry, and whine, quite raised him out 
of the category of dumb beasts. 

Baithene and Ethne had much to compare. All 
kinds of new questions, social and ecclesiastical, 
had arisen before them ; the world divided itself 
so differently here from the old classifications of 


ROME AND HER SAINT. l6l 

their childhood. City '’and ‘‘ country " were in 
themselves new words to them, never having before 
their capture beheld any collection of houses 
worthy to be called a town. The terms “ master " 
and •“slave" were not so altogether new, since 
in Ireland also captives were held in bondage, 
and their own Patrick had been once a slave. 
But that the whole class of owners and employers 
should be slave-owners, and the whole class of 
labourers and servants slaves, with no natural 
human links between them of clan or race, was 
indeed new. As to the Church, there was less to 
perplex them, since from the beginning they had 
been brought face to face with the great per- 
plexity of all times, that so many Christians were 
not in the least Christ-like. Heretics indeed they 
heard of, of various degrees and names — Arian, 
semi-Arian, Pelagian, semi-Pelagian, Nestorian, 
Eutychian, Manichean ; but these seemed to them 
mostly of foreign growth : the Arians chiefly 
Gothic ; the Eutychians (whatever that might 
mean) chiefly from the East ; the Manicheans 
chiefly from Africa ; the Pelagians from their own 
West, from the Britanniae, the land of the pirates 
who had captured them. Rome had seldom 
originated the great heretics or the great theolo- 
gians. And, moreover, of all these confusions the 
brother and sister had chiefly heard through a 
voice ringing clear, simple, sonorous above all the 
tumult like the voice of their own Patrick ; and 
that was the voice of Leo, Bishop Leo, Pope Leo, 
Leo the Great of Rome. Lupus they knew was 
called Pope at Troyes, and Anianus at Orleans; 


i62 attila and his conquerors. 

but this Leo it seemed was pope and father of a 
wider world. Rome herself, many years before, 
they were told, the restless, divided city, had 
waited in peace for forty days, during his absence 
after his election, united in the unanimous choice 
of him as her shepherd and guide. And ever 
since in all perplexities she had always turned to 
him, never absent, as her defender and real lord ; 
rock of strength amidst all the tossings of the 
waves and all the crumblings of the strongholds. 
Ethne said to Baithene — 

“ It seems as though God had sent Leo to 
Rome, as He sent Patrick to Ireland. If ever 
thou, beloved, were to take Holy Orders in this 
strange land, surely it would be Leo’s hands that 
would consecrate thee.” 

“ Leo’s hands would never consecrate me ! ” he 
replied, with a slight touch of bitterness unusual 
with him. '' Have I not been, and am I not still, 
a slave And Leo does not admit slaves to the 
priesthood. They told me amid the Sabine hills 
that he wrote to the bishops of Campania, that ‘a 
servile meanness made some slaves seek the honour 
of the priesthood, seeking that they who found no 
approval from man might find approval from God ; 
but the sacred ministry,’ he said, ‘ would be 
polluted by the meanness of such association. 
None who are bound to the service of others ’ (^qui 
originali aut alicui conditione obligati stini)^ he 
wrote, ‘ or in any way not free by birth or station, 
was fit to serve in the camp of God.’ ” ^ 

1 Vide St. Leo, Epistola 4, ad Episcopos per Campaniam 
Tusciam, &c., Acta Sanctorum, S. Leonis, Opera i, p. 61 1. 


ROME And her saint. 163 

But Patrick was a slave P’ she exclaimed. 

“ Patrick was born free/' he replied. 

But thou also wert born free ! " she said, her face 
brightening. “ Leo could never mean to exclude 
such as thee ! ” 

“ I know not, little sister,'' he replied. Many 
indeed of the slaves of the Romans are captives 
born free, but the Roman law gives the purchaser 
indelible rights over the purchased.” 

Ethne's eyes filled with tears. 

“ Does Christianity itself, even the Heavenly City, 
which is free, and the mother of us all, turn against 
us ? Is there no refuge at all in this world for the 
wronged ? ” 

As thou sayest,” he replied, the heavenly 
Jerusalem is free; we shall all be free there. And 
here we can always be free in soul ! Moreover,” he 
added, ‘'slavery does often indeed degrade the 
slave, and make him through all his being slavish 
and unfit for any high office. And on me, beloved, 
this does not weigh heavily after all. God helping 
us, we have another calling, the old reigning and 
serving for our own people.” 

“ At all events,” said Ethne, “ we may add Leo's 
prayer to Patrick's hymn — ‘ Grant us the spirit to 
think and do always such things as be rightful, 
that we who cannot do anything that is good with- 
out Thee, may by Thee be enabled to live according 
to Thy will.' It is the great Bishop's prayer for 
us, and for himself,” she added ; “ let us say it 
together for him as well as for ourselves.” 

The entertainments, banquets, and visits of 
state occasioned by the return of Fabricius to 


164 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

Rome, necessarily made the position of the Irish 
captives more difficult. Although their being 
members of the Aventine household was their best 
protection, Fabricius and Damaris could not bear 
to have them regarded as in bondage ; and yet as 
guests the world could not receive them. 

Christmas was drawing near, with many of the 
old pagan festivities, as well as those of the 
Christian Church, gathered around the season. 
But to the Irish captives it brought no festive 
home gatherings — this their first Christian Christ- 
mas, their first homeless New Year. To them, 
therefore, all that was festive in the season was 
concentrated entirely in the great Festival of the 
Nativity. Their home was in the home of the Holy 
Childhood of the Child Jesus and the Mother 
Mary. The great stately basilicas were as a 
family hearth to these fatherless and motherless 
exiles, and the words of Bishop Leo on the 
Incarnation were as a fathers welcome to them. 

“You know well, dilectissirni,” Leo said, “and 
have frequently heard the things which belong to 
the sacred observance of this day’s solemnity. But 
as this visible light affords pleasure to uninjured 
eyes, so do sound hearts receive perpetual joy from 
the Nativity of the Saviour. Wherefore we must 
never be silent, though we cannot set it forth as it 
deserves,’^ ^ 

Then he spoke of “the general Confession common 
to all, whereby the whole body of the faithful say 

^ S. Leo, Sermon XXIII. These quotations are taken 
from sermons of S. Leo on the Nativity and the Epiphany, 
in the Acta Sanctorum. 


ROME AND HER SAINT. 


165 


they believe in God the Father Almighty, and in 
Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord, Who was 
born of the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary ; 
by which three clauses,"' he said, the engines of 
attack of all the heretics are shattered." ^ 

And Ethne and Baithene, who knew the Confes- 
sion well, although they knew little of the heretics, 
felt warm and safe as birds in their own nest 
within the sacred walls, which kept them safe from 
all these battering-rams. 

Again Leo said — 

“ Lowliness was taken up by Majesty, weakness 
by Power, mortality by Eternity ; and in order to 
pay the debt of our corruption, the inviolable nature 
was united to that which could suffer. 

“ In the entire and perfect nature of very man 
was born the very God ; whole, in what was His ; 
whole, in what was ours. By ours we mean what 
the Creator formed in us at the beginning, and 
what He assumed in order to restore. For of that 
which the demon brought, which man, by him 
deceived, admitted, there was not a trace in the 
Saviour; and the fact that He took on Himself 
our infirmities did not make Him partaker of our 
transgressions. He took on Him the form of a 
servant, of a slave " (at these words Ethne gently 
touched her brother's arm), without the defilement 
of sin, enlarging the human and not diminishing 
the Divine ; for that emptying of Himself whereby 
the Invisible made Himself visible, and the Creator 
of all things willed to be one among mortals, was 

1 Epistles of S. Leo. The Tome, 28, Epistle to Flavian, 
Bishop of Constantinople. 


l66 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

the stooping of compassion, not the failure of 
power. 

“ The infancy of the Babe is exhibited by the 
swaddling clpthes ; the greatness of the Highest is 
declared by the voices of angels. To hunger, to 
thirst, to be weary, is evidently human ; but to 
supply five thousand men with five loaves, and to 
give to the Samaritan woman that living water of 
which to drink is never to thirst again, — to walk on 
the back of the sea with feet that sink not, and to 
allay the liftings up of the waves tossed by the 
storm, is unquestionably Divine. To weep over a 
dead friend is human ; by a voice of command 
to raise him to life again is Divine. It belongs to 
our nature to hang on the wood of the Cross ; and 
to another to make all the elements tremble when 
day had been darkened into night. It belongs to 
humanity to be transfixed with nails ; it belongs to 
Deity to open the gates of Paradise to the faith of 
the robber.^ 

Our Lord, the true Shepherd, Who laid down 
His life for the sheep, and Who came not to destroy 
men’s lives but to save them, wills us to imitate 
His own loving-kindness.” 

Such words as these made that season indeed 
a festival to the captives, rich with the joy the world 
could not give nor take away, a joy in which they 
and Damaris and Lucia, and every slave among the 
hundreds in that great patrician household, could 
rejoice alike. 

Then came the great Festival of the Epiphany, 
which these children from the Isles of the Gentiles 
1 The Tome, 28, Epistle. 


ROME AND HER SAINT. 167 

felt to be especially their own. And again the 
clear, strong words of Leo rang through the crowded 
basilica. 

“ The last holy day which we celebrated was 
that on which a pure Virgin brought forth the 
Saviour of mankind. And now, beloved, the vener- 
able Festival of the Epiphany gives us a continuation 
of joys. 

“ For the salvation of all men is interested in the 
fact, that the infancy of the Mediator between God 
and man was clearly manifested to the whole world 
whilst it was still detained in an insignificant little 
town. 

For although He had chosen out the Israelitish 
nation, and one family of that nation, from which 
to take on Him the nature of universal humanity, 
yet it was not His will that the beginnings of His 
life should be concealed within the narrow limits of 
his mother’s abode ; but as He was pleased to be 
born for all. He willed to be speedily recognized 
by all, and accordingly the star appeared to the 
Magi. 

“Lift up, dearly beloved, your faithful minds to 
the faithful grace of the everlasting light. Follow 
after that humility, clothe yourself with the strength 
of patience, that in it you may be able to make your 
souls your own ; for He Who is the redemption of 
all is Himself the courage of all.” 

“ Brother,” said Ethne that evening, as they sat 
alone together, while Fabricius held a great 
banquet for his kinsmen, “ I think I understand 
about Leo and the slaves. It is only because he 
has never had the gift of being himself a slave. 


i68 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


Thank God, our Patrick had been a captive, and 
so learnt the heart of a captive and a slave. And 
you see even the All-Merciful had to become one of 
us, that He might be touched with the feeling of 
our infirmities.” 

Baithene was silent a few minutes, and then he 
said in a low, deep voice, taking his sister’s hands 
in his own — 

“ If ever we are lifted back to our place among 
the few, little sister, God grant we may never lose 
the lessons learnt by living down among the 
many ! ” 




CHAPTER XV. 

RANSOMS AND CAPTIVITIES. 

NE winter morning, not long after the 
Epiphany, when Damaris and Ethne 
were sitting together quietly reading 
in a room opening on the long pillared 
corridor, they were surprised by the angry barking 
of a dog, followed by cries of pain from a human 
voice. In a moment Ethne was away. 

“ It is Bran ! she said ; he is killing something, 
or some one is killing him ; perhaps both.” 

In a few minutes she returned, with the dog 
crouching penitently beside her, with apologizing 
ears and tail, whilst behind her came Marius, lead- 
ing a roughly-clad stranger, who was slightly 
limping. It was Dewi, the British sailor. 

When the joyful greetings between Marius and 
his mother and sister were over, they all re-entered 
the portico, and Dewi threw himself down at 
Ethne’s feet and kissed the hem of her garment. 
In his arms he carried a large package, which he 
laid at her feet with every possible expression and 
gesture of homage. 

“ What is he saying ? ” Lucia asked. 



ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


170 


‘‘ He is only giving me great titles in our own 
language/’ said Ethne, princess, and lady, and I 
know not what else, and saying we have saved 
his life now for the second time.” 

Meantime Bran continued giving out low growls, 
evidently endeavouring to awaken his friends to 
danger, with a desponding conviction that his 
remonstrances were not likely to be attended to. 

“What is the dog saying Lucia asked, “as 
you seem to know everybody’s language.” 

“ He is reminding us, I suppose, how Dewi gave 
him a blow with a club when the pirates took us 
captive.” 

Then Marius intervened — 

“Excuse me, lady!” he said to Ethne and his 
moth-'r and sister. “The dog hurried the intro- 
duction. But to you, mother, I see this lady needs 
no introduction of mine.” 

At that moment Fabricius appeared from another 
door with B lithene. Ethne arose, and clasping 
her brother’s hands, said with quivering voice — 

“ They live ! they are well 1 ” and again Dewi’s 
homage was repeated to Baithene ; and then he 
placed in his hands a large bag which he had kept 
closely wrapped in his plaid. 

“What does it all mean.^” Fabricius asked, 
much perplexed by these sudden appearances, and 
by the various languages, human and canine. 

Gradually the explanation came. Marius had 
found the British sailor on the quay at Marseilles 
(where he had been staying with his friend the 
Presbyter Salvian). The poor Briton was vainly 
endeavouring to make himself understood, and 


RANSOMS AND CAPTIVITIES. I/I 

Marius took compassion on him ; something in the 
cadences of his voice made him think of Ethne 
and Baithene. 

After a time an Armorican Breton was found to 
interpret, and between them at last they came to 
understand that Dewi had just come from Ireland,^ 
and was now on his way to Rome, and was trying 
to find some vessel to take him to Ostia, the port 
of Rome. He had a message from an Irish prince 
or chieftain to his son and daughter, who had been 
captured by British pirates, and were supposed to 
have been taken in bondage to Rome. 

‘‘When I understood this,’' said Marius, turning 
to Baithene and Ethne, “ I ventured to question 
him further, and soon I felt sure thit his message 
was for you, so I took ship with him, and have 
brought him hither.” 

Damaris ordered refreshment to be brought, and 
left the stranger alone with Ethne and Baithene. 

When they were alone Dewi knelt again and 
kissed their hands, and could scarcely be induced 
to say or do anything but gaze on them raptur- 
ously, as on a priceless treasure unexpectedly 
recovered. But Ethne insisted that the wound on 
his ankle should be looked to at once, for the blood 
was flowing fast. Baithene unfastened his sandals. 
Fortunately the wound, though serious, was not 
very deep. 

“ He remembered the place of his old bite,” said 
Dewi, with a grim smile, “ and he nearly did it 
this time.” 

When the wound was washed and bandaged by 
Ethne’s gentle hands, Dewi was persuaded to sit - 


1/2 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


down and partake of the food provided for him. 
The questions that could scarcely be asked at first 
in the tumult of fear and joy and welcome, came 
out one by one, and brought out the tidings and 
messages from home. The father and mother 
were well, Dewi said. But he spoke of them as 
grey-haired and old, and Baithene and Ethne could 
only think of them as in the prime and vigour of 
life. Could it be possible that grief for the loss of 
their children had thus aged them ? 

“ They welcomed me like a prince, like a brother,” 
Dewi said, when I told them I came from you — 
I, who deserved so ill of them ! The dog’s welcome 
was what I deserved ! ” he added in a choking voice. 

“You risked your life to serve us and them,” 
said Ethne ; “ and what welcome could be too 
warm and thankful for that ? ” 

Dewi acknowledged that he had run many risks, 
and had many toilsome journeys, but on these he 
would not dwell. He had seen Patrick also, the 
great Bishop Patrick. He had received his pardon 
and his blessing, and he had brought Patrick’s 
blessing for them, their father’s and mother’s bless- 
ing, and Patrick’s. 

“Did they say what they would have us do.^” 
Baithene asked. 

“They long above all to see your faces once 
more, but they know how perilous the journey is, 
even if you could be free. And they entreated you 
for t/iezr sake, and your own, and your people’s, not 
to come unless it is safe.” 

“ But we are not free ! ” said Baithene ; “do they 
know that Do they think any toils or perils 


RANSOMS AND CAPTIVITIES. I73 

could ever have kept us from them if we were free 
to go?’’ 

Dewi’s eyes sparkled with a consciousness of 
having good tidings to bring, a remedy, as he 
thought, for all their woes. 

“ When you open the packet and empty the 
bag,” said he, “ you will see that you have freedom 
in your own hands.” And he began to untwist the 
ropes around the packet, while Baithene opened 
the bag. In the bag there were coins, gold, silver, 
and copper ; in the packet were costly silks, and 
store of fine linen and woollen raiment. Finally 
Dewi drew from another hiding-place a box, which 
he presented to Ethne ; it contained her mother’s 
jewels, carefully wrought gold and silver torques 
and bracelets and armlets, with clasps of gems and 
precious stones. 

When Ethne saw the precious things she had 
clasped around her mother’s neck, and her mother 
around her own from childhood, she hid her face 
on her brother’s shoulder and burst into a passion 
of weeping. When she could speak she turned to 
Dewi, fearing to seem ungrateful to him. 

‘‘You have been all but starved many a time, I 
know,” she said, “ whilst you were keeping sacredly 
all these treasures to bring to us ! ” 

Then one by one she recognized other humbler 
ornaments, priceless to her heart from the very 
smallness of their value, coming as she knew they 
did from the poverty of those who in giving them 
had given the best they had. 

“ This is old Brian’s,” they said, “ who died by 
the pirate’s spear in trying to save us ; and this is 


174 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


his mother’s ; and this is from our own old nurse, 
the one precious heirloom of her house.” 

“Yes,” replied Dewi ; “ everything precious your 
people possessed they insisted on my bringing, till 
I could carry no more. What were gold and silver 
to them, they said, when you, the jewels of the 
hearts of all, were lost ? ” 

A pang shot through Ethne’s heart that they 
could for a moment have been interested in any 
one or anything else while these faithful hearts 
were thus mourning and wearying for them. 
Something of this she said to Baithene. 

“Yet what could we have done.^” she added; 
“how could we live anywhere for anytime without 
loving r* 

“ Surely j/ou could not, darling,” he replied. “ The 
Heavenly Father made you that way.” 

After a time Damaris returned with Fabricius. 

“ What are all these treasures ? ” Fabricius asked ; 
and Dewi answered through Baithene — 

“These, my lord, are the ransoms sent by the 
Irish king and his people to the prince and princess, 
their son and daughter, that they may be restored 
to their home and their land.” 

“ I require no ransom,” Fabricius said. “ I have 
always thought of these noble captives as free-born, 
and high-born as myself ; ” and going to a chest 
he drew out a parchment. “ This is the deed of 
manumission,” he said, “setting free according to 
our law those who have been taken captive. It is 
merely a form. I only held it back until the 
moment seemed to have come when it would be 
safe for them to return to their country.” 


RANSOMS AND CAPTIVITIES. I7S 

Ethne and Baithene were much moved at the 
generous intentions of the old Roman ; but yet 
Marius felt they were not satisfied, and could not 
be, to receive their freedom as a gift from any one. 

‘‘Father,” he said, “and you our guests of 
patrician descent, though of another race, pardon 
me if I misunderstand you and say what you do 
not like. But it seems to me the ransom of 
the chieftain and his people should be accepted. 
It must be sweeter and truer for our guests that 
they should be delivered from unjust captivity by 
the willing sacrifices of their own kindred, rather 
than by any gift from us. I suggest that the 
ransom be accepted, and these victims of the mis- 
rule of the country we Romans have abandoned, 
should be declared to be what they have always in 
justice been — free by Divine and human right 
always and for ever.” 

Ethne’s eyes were full of grateful tears as she 
raised them for a moment and met his. Fabricius 
demurred a little. 

“There must, I fear,” he said, “be a deed of 
manumission, or something to that effect, to satisfy 
our law. And how is it possible for me to accept 
a ransom for doing an act of justice and reparation 
to foreigners, for wrongs committed by Roman 
law ? to Christians, for wrongs inflicted by apostate 
Christians ? ” 

“It is best as Marius says,” interposed the soft 
voice of Damaris decisively. 

“ Take money for restoring rights to these our 
friends and honoured guests!” the old man ex- 
claimed indignantly. 


iy6 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

“Let it be a gift all round,” Damaris replied; 
“ your gift to Eleazar for them, the generous gift 
of their kindred for these children to thee and me.” 

But after a short consultation in low tones 
between the brother and sister, Baithene interposed 
with an objection. 

“ Should not everything be true between us all, 
lady.^” he said to Damaris. “Let it be simply 
a debt repaid for the ransom so generously given. 
Let the illustrious Fabricius graciously receive the 
sum he most graciously gave for us to the Jew. 
Thus I think will our parents and our people be 
content.” 

And Ethne added — 

“Our people would not take back what they 
have given. We must not rob them of the joy of 
their sacrifices, for theirs are all offerings of loyalty 
and love.” 

“ Then, that mercy and truth may meet together, 
fair maiden,” replied Fabricius, “so be it ; you shall 
have your way.” 

Accordingly the bagful of Roman coin, received 
for Irish merchandise, was poured out on the table, 
and every coin was carefully counted against the 
ransom paid by Fabricius to Eleazar. 

To the satisfaction of Fabricius, there was found 
to be a considerable amount over. Baithene would 
have thrown it all in, but Fabricius replied, 
laughing — 

“Nay, my friend, we also can be wilful. Let 
truth have her rigid rights, as you demand ; and 
besides,” he added, “think of the misery of our 
friend the Jew in having made such a bad bargain.” 


RANSOMS AND CAPTIVITIES. 177 

At this Ethne’s colour rose, and with a tearful 
voice she said — 

Eleazar and Miriam could have made a far 
higher price to the officers of the Imperial house- 
hold, but they had pity on us. I shall tell them 
all at once.” 

And we will give them the rest of the coins,” 
suggested Baithene. 

''We will give them nothingl' replied Ethne, 
decisively. " They had pity on us ; and nothing 
shall rob them of the grace of their compassion, or 
us of the right to be grateful.” 

Thus the friendly contest ended, and the gather- 
ing dispersed — Damaris to have the quiet inter- 
view she had been longing for with Marius ; Fabri- 
cius and Lucia to settle Dewi into comfortable 
quarters; Ethne and Baithene, with the dog, to the 
house of Eleazar. There they found Miriam, and 
claimed her sympathy in their good tidings. 

" It is surely a good augury for thee,” Ethne 
said. " I have found my mother ! And thou shalt 
surely yet find thy daughter ! The Good Shepherd 
knows indeed where every one of His flock is ; 
and therefore He will know how to restore your 
lost lamb to you.” And as she left, she fastened 
round Miriam’s wrist the most costly and beautiful 
of the gold bracelets. " Give that to your daughter 
when you find her,” she said ; " it is my mother’s ; 
let me give it from her to thy child.” 

Eleazar came in as she spoke. Miriam was' softly 
weeping, and the old man was moved to the heart. 
As a son of Aaron, he laid his priestly hands in 
benediction on the heads of the Irish captives. 

M 


1/8 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


May the blessing of the God of our fathers 
rest on you, my son and daughter,” he said ; and 
then solemnly he pronounced the ancient priestly 
benediction committed to the sons of Aaron : ‘"The 
Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make 
His face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto 
thee. The Lord lift up His countenance upon 
thee, and give thee peace. And pray thou to our 
God for us,” he afterwards added sadly and humbly 
to Ethne ; ‘‘it seems that He hears thee!' 

When Marius and Damaris were alone together, 
it was some time before they said anything. They 
sat hand in hand on the couch, whilst Marius 
placed his other hand before his eyes. At length 
she gently withdrew her hand from his, and then 
withdrawing his from his forehead, took both his 
hands with a gesture of tender, motherly command 
into her own, and looked into his eyes. 

“ It is thou who hast made the real sacrifice to- 
day,” she said very softly. “ Thy lady and prin- 
cess, being free, will go back as soon as possible, 
thou well knowest, at any cost or peril, to her 
father and mother, her country and her people.” 

“Would not that be right for her he said. “If it 
is, she is sure to see and do the thing that is right.” 

“ She will think this right,” Damaris replied. 

“And what ought we to do.^” he asked, in an 
anguish of suspense. 

“ Pray Leo’s prayer,” she replied, “all of us. Teach 
us to think and do the things that are rightful.” 

“ It is an excellent prayer,” said Marius very 
respectfully, but not, apparently, at all consoled, 
“and prayer always comforts thee.” 


RANSOMS AND CAPTIVITIES. 


179 


Then the mother threw her arms around her 
son, and a radiant smile illumined her face as she 
looked up into his. 

Ethne s heart will surely turn to thee, my 
son,'' she said. “ God has chosen her out of all 
the world for thee, and led her to thee, as He led 
Eve to Adam. Trust Him, and trust her." 

Mother,’' he said, ‘‘ may I say anything to her } " 

“You may say what you will,"she replied, “or what 
you can, whatever thy heart feels free to say, and she 
is willing to hear. Thou art free, and she is free. 
Let her choose what she will, and in her own time." 

“ But my father } " he asked. 

“ Leave him to me," smiled Damaris. “ We 
have understood each other long enough." 

Marius had not long to wait. Soon after, 
Lucia joined them, and they waited in the porch 
for the return of Ethne and Baithene. It was 
evening before they came back, with a happy 
repose in their look and manner. This newly 
acknowledged freedom seemed to make little 
difference to Ethne ; but Baithene's step was light 
with a new spring, and his whole being had a new 
power, not so much as if he had been ransomed 
from bondage, but as if he had sprung at a bound 
into full and princely manhood, prepared to take 
his place in the world. 

Fabricius drew near and greeted him with a 
smile. 

“You have been to your friends the Israelites. 
Doubtless," he added with some malice to Ethne, 
“ you, lady, have kept your rigid determination to 
bestow nothing on them." 


l8o ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

‘'She has given Miriam the treasure she values 
most — an ancient heirloom of our house/' replied 
Baithene. 

Ethne could not defend herself ; and Lucia 
kissed her hand, laughing, and said — 

“ Of course ; I knew — we all knew what thou 
wouldst do ! " 

Had Lucia spoken thus but yesterday, Baithene 
would have retorted with a jest ; but with the 
recognition of their freedom and true place in the 
world, and all the happy possibilities the breaking 
down of any barrier between them might involve, 
had come also an indefinable distance between 
them, and he only said — 

“ I had thought that very jewel might be ac- 
cepted by thy mother or by thee, little as our poor 
barbarian treasures must seem to you." 

Damaris expressed a wish to see the Irish trea- 
sures again, and whilst the others went into an 
inner chamber to look at them, Marius remained 
alone with Ethne in the portico, the soft perfume of 
lilies and roses coming to them from the gardens. 
Whilst he was hesitating what to say, she began — 

“Tell me," she said, “about Lupus, the good 
old Bishop of Troyes. Is he back in his own 
city again " 

Marius hesitated a moment, and then he replied — 

“Thy judgment of Attila was just: he did not 
fail. Bishop Lupus came back unharmed. But 
his own people failed, incredible as it seems. His 
own flock, the city he had saved at risk of his 
life, when he returned from his perilous sojourn 
among the Huns, received him coldly, indeed 


RANSOMS AND CAPTIVITIES. l8l 

would scarcely receive him at all. Mean slanderers 
had been there poisoning the minds of the citizens 
during his absence. They said he must have 
treacherously flattered and fawned upon the bar- 
barians, and be in league with Attila ; and they 
gave him but a cold welcome.^^ 

What did the Bishop do she asked indignantly. 

“He quietly retired to a mountain not far off,’' 
Marius replied, “ and there to this day he is living 
in exile, poor and solitary and neglected." 

“Yet surely praying and hoping still for his 
misguided flock ! " Ethne said ; and with her vic- 
torious smile she added, “ He is sure to win in 
the end. But why, oh, why is it we, we Christ’s 
Christians, seem so often most to fail Him and 
His.?" 

“y^// do not fail," he said, seeking to comfort 
her. “ My friend Sidonius Apollinaris writes to 
Bishop Lupus as ‘ father of fathers, as old well-nigh 
as Moses, but also as great.’ ’’ 

“ But ah," she said mournfully, “what a world this 
might be if only all the Church werQ 07 ie, and true!" 

“You are weary," he said sadly, “of this decrepit, 
decaying old world of ours. You are longing to 
go home to your own young world of hope — to 
your Patrick, and your own people, who under- 
stand and honour their saint so well I " 

“ When we may," she said. “ I am the only 
daughter of my house, and my father and mother 
are aged." 

“ I know well what that means," he replied. 
“We also are only children of our house. Dost 
thou not know, lady, that always, with all my 


1 82 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

power, at any cost to myself, I would fain help thee 
to what thou deemest best 

“ You have always helped us,” she said, always 
understood — at Orleans, at Troyes — always.” 

‘‘If you decide on leaving Rome,” he said, after 
a pause, in a low, deep voice, “ I would try and 
help you at any cost.” 

Did she understand, he wondered, at what a 
cost it might be to himself.^ Did either of them 
understand what a pang of conflict it might cost to 
her ? Her eyelids fell before his passionate gaze, 
the dark lashes shaded her cheek. But at that 
moment he felt he would not, need not question 
her further. A trembling hope came into his heart 
that he had won his answer ; and with the hope 
came the response to his mother's words about 
Leo's prayer, and he said softly — 

“ Help us to think and to do the things that are 
rightful.'' 

Then the frank, grey eyes were raised ' dnce 
more to his with an expression of rejoicing and 
entire trust. 

“What is rightful?'' she said. “That must 
always mean what He Who loves us best sees is 
best for us, must it not ? ” 

And for the first time he seemed to see into the 
clear depths of her soul, and to be sure that she 
was no longer apart from him to be questioned, 
but close beside him, sharing his very soul, and 
questioning herself. He felt as if the pleading for 
him with her was in higher hands, and quite safe 
there. And suddenly he felt constrained to open 
the depths of his own heart and mind to her. 


RANSOMS AND CAPTIVITIES. 1 83 

Leo and his prayers are so much to my mother 
and to you/’ he said. Can you bear all these 
debates and controversies about the deepest things 
of all ? They seem to me like troops of Huns 
wheeling around within the very Holy of Holies. 
They make everything like a mere word-battle and 
empty show to me. Or they did make it so till 
lately/’ he added, glancing at her with a new 
light in his eyes. 

I don’t know all the mistaken things other 
people have been thinking,” she answered quietly, 
“ but to me Bishop Leo always seems simply 
unfolding into full, beautiful blossom the faith 
Patrick taught us in the Creed and the Hymn. 
He always seems building a fortress and strong- 
hold for us all. But the fortress is for us also a 
home ; for we are children, inside. He makes me 
think often of the words they chant in church : 
‘The Lord is my Rock and my Fortress/ the 
sweet voices say ; and the others answer, ‘ He 
shall defend thee under His wings, and thou shalt 
be safe under His feathers.’ Stone buttresses of 
a fortress to the enemy outside ; to those within, 
a warm nest with the soft feathers and downy breast 
of a mother-bird brooding over us. For the strong- 
hold is not anything Bishop Leo builds, but God 
Himself, to Whom he leads us, and God is love.” 

“And you yourself have led me within, and we 
are together.” 

“We are together,” said Ethne. 

And that evening they said no more. 

The days sped quickly away in the palace on 


1 84 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

the Aventine. Dewi’s wound was rather slow in 
healing ; and until their faithful messenger could 
return, there was a suspense as to the possibility 
of decisions for the future. 

Day by day as it passed drew the little company 
closer to each other. 

In those days it was an unquestioned right 
and duty of parents to dispose of their sons and 
daughters in marriage. It was a responsibility and 
a power not to be set aside. 

“ There must be two marriages/' Fabricius said 
decisively to Damaris. “These four are clearly 
made for each other.” 

“ Dost thou see what that would mean for us } ” 
she replied. 

“Thou wouldst gain a daughter-in-law after 
thine heart,” he said. 

But our own Lucia ! ” she sighed. 

“ Lucia,” he answered, “ would win a husband 
worthy of her. Where in this corrupt city could 
we find a son-in-law so good and true, such a man, 
such a Roman, as Baithene ^ A new life and order 
come into the farm, the forest, the household, 
wherever he is.” 

“But Baithene will not be for 02ir household,” 
she said, with some hesitation, fearing he had not 
counted the cost. 

“ I know that too well,” he said. “ Our Luciola 
will be for his home, his kingdom, his people. But 
is that a new lot for our race ? Is it not our 
ancient destiny and calling to send forth men and 
women trained to bring light and order everywhere 
throughout the world ? 1 am old, beloved, and 


RANSOMS AND CAPTIVITIES. 


185 


cannot long be here to care for her or thee in these 
evil times. Thou art younger, at least always 
young to me. Canst thou be content to give the 
child to Baithene ? '' 

'‘We are Christians, my beloved!^’ she replied, 
“and, in the old time-honoured words, ‘to us all 
countries are a fatherland.^ We have given the 
children to the Lord Christ from the first ; and if 
He calls them to the ends of the earth they must 
go. All lands are His ; this land of theirs seems 
even now to be beginning to listen to His call, and 
to need them more than any.’’ 

Thus in simple patriarchal or Roman fashion it 
happened, that by the paternal power the union 
already in the hearts of their children was sanc- 
tioned and brought into the region of acknowledged 
fact. Fabricius decreed that there should be two 
betrothals. Baithene had no question that his 
father and mother would welcome as a priceless 
treasure such a bride. But Ethne stipulated that 
before a marriage could be, they must receive the 
consent and benediction of their own father and 
mother. To procure this was no easy matter, with 
the broken communication brought about by the 
decay of the Empire, the breaking up of the grand 
old system of Roman roads, and the interposing of 
nations of unsettled invaders throughout Gaul and 
Britain. 

But before their plans could be matured a new 
peril burst in on the harmony of the peaceful home 
on the Aventine from the chaotic world outside. 
It was reported that Attila was once more on the 
march to ravage Italy and capture Rome. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

BELEAGUERED AQUILEIA. 


TTILA the Hun had been nursing his 
vengeance and preparing his forces 
beyond the Danube all through that 
silent winter which had brought such 
peace and light to the palace on the Aventine. 
And early in the spring came the terrible tidings 
that he was coming with his hundreds of thousands, 
always, it seemed, to be renewed from the in- 
exhaustible regions of barbarian life in the wilds of 
the East ; and this time he was to be turned back 
by no diplomacy, nor turned aside by any inter- 
vening prey. Attila and his Huns were already at 
the frontier, besieging the great frontier fortress 
of Aquileia, on their way to capture and plunder 
Rome. 

There was little time for consideration. It was 
no moment, they all felt, for a woman to venture 
into the perils of a journey across Europe. It was 
therefore decided that Baithene should go back 
with Dewi to Ireland. It was also a time, Marius 
felt, for every Roman who was able to devote 



BELEAGUERED AQUILEIA. 


187 


himself to the defence of the Empire against a 
force whose triumph would mean the destruction 
of Christianity and civilization, the laying waste of 
all Europe into a Tartar wilderness, creation lapsing 
again into chaos. 

And so the four, so recently drawn together, had 
to part. But the parting brought in some ways a 
new certainty of their inseparable union, like the 
ripening of a ‘‘sudden frost.'’ 

Baithene said to Lucia — 

“ I am going to my Ireland, with no doubt in my 
heart as to the welcome my father and mother 
would have for thee. Only for thee, sometimes 
I scarcely dare to ask that thou shouldst come 
forth to share our rough life, to be exiled from 
such a home as thine." 

“ My father," was Lucia's answer, “ thinks of 
that island of thine as a haven of peace and sim- 
plicity, and my mother as an isle of saints, com- 
pared with our Rome." 

“ But thou thyself.^ " 

“ I am not sure of any country being a haven, or 
a heaven," she said. “ Perhaps," she added with a 
smile, “ neither thou nor I may be ready for either 
yet. I may have to grow younger, and thou older. 
But we should be together, in the storm or in the 
calm. And I am well content." 

And Marius said to Ethne — 

“ How can I leave thee, who hast made earth 
dear to me and heaven real ? who hast given me 
back faith in God and hope in man 

“ Thou art not leaving me," Ethne replied. 
“We are in one path, in the steps of the pitiful, 


i88 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


redeeming Lord. Thou wilt not despair of the 
slaves, however degraded, or of the Huns, however 
savage, for His sake.” 

‘‘For His sake and thine,” he replied, “for the 
sacred memory of thy captivity, and the dear first 
vision of thee beside the poor dying boy. Thou 
feelest then, beloved, that we are beginning our life 
together now ? ” 

“Have we not begun she said. “ Our paths 
may be divided for a little while, but zve never.” 

And so they parted. 

For three long months, throughout the spring, 
the tidings of the ruin and ravage of the Huns on 
the northern shores of the Adriatic continued to 
reach the household on the Aventine. The great 
hordes were still swarming in the neighbourhood 
of unconquered Aquileia, whither they knew 
Marius had gone, and where the Roman garrison 
were making a stand worthy of old Rome. 

One letter reached the mother from her son — 

“ I am once more in the house of the lady Digna, 
the young matron who, in her beauty and truth, 
seems to belong rather to the grand simplicity of the 
Republic than to any people or any period since. 
Close to her house is a high tower rising above the 
river, flowing crystal clear as if fresh from the blue 
hills which you see from the top. We cannot 
despair of saving the city, the virgin city, that has 
kept off so many enemies. The traditions of the 
ancient heroism seem to inspire its men and its 
women to-day. There are stories of days not so 
long gone, when the Emperor Julian floated wooden 
towers on rafts up the river to penetrate into the 


BELEAGUERED AQUILEIA. 


189 


place where it had no walls. But the citizens set 
fire to the towers and baffled the Emperor. Im- 
pregnable this city of the north wind has been, as 
the north wind himself in the fastnesses of those 
rugged mountains. If we can but keep her im- 
pregnable this once more, who knows but the 
hordes of Attila may turn back again from Italy, 
as they did from Gaul after our battle on the plains 
of Chalons ? There are rumours of discouragement 
and division in Attila’s camp. The ancient spell 
of Rome, some say, is falling on them, the memory 
of Alaric lying dead beneath the river-bed so soon 
after that last siege and sack ; it is said even to 
have in some measure benumbed Attila himself. 
Glorious it would ‘be if this old stronghold should 
by her heroic stand keep back the tide of devasta- 
tion from our Italy, perchance even drive back for 
ever the flood of barbarism from the world ; and 
Jerome’s birthplace become the birthplace of a new 
order and freedom for all Christendom, a new 
Vulgate or translation of the great old Scriptures of 
righteousness and peace into the common tongue 
of men. 

‘'The trade has indeed for the moment vanished 
from her port ; the fleets of her merchantmen 
behold her from afar off ; the sea is silent, and the 
busy fields around are dumb and waste. But if 
this unusual quiet in the camp of Attila does 
indeed mean that discouragement has fallen on his 
hosts, this silence may prove the silence of dawn. 
But whatever the end, the many heroic deeds done 
here can never be lost.” 

After that letter, week after week flowed on, but 


1 90 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

brought no tidings from Marius. They heard 
indeed from time to time that Aquileia still held 
her own, that the great hordes still surrounded the 
city, apparently checked and baffled there, unable 
to press on to further destruction while that brave 
garrison remained unconquered in their rear. 

From Baithene no one expected tidings until 
he brought them himself. 

And so the four on the Aventine were drawn 
closer to each other, through their common sus- 
pense, their common love, their common prayers. 
Happily for them the natural spring was also the 
Christian Lent, with its prayers and fasts, to be 
followed by the Passion-tide, and the solemn, im- 
mortal joys of Easter which no sorrow ever more 
could quench. 

And through all they had the great sermons of 
Leo, strong against all despondency, firm against 
all yielding to the enemy as Aquileia herself, with 
the bracing force as of the north wind through 
them. Their Roman reticence and brevity made 
them a rock of strength amidst the floods of dread 
and suspense surging through every heart ; they 
seemed not so much words as the sympathetic 
sustaining grasp of a strong hand. And from 
Damaris Ethne learned how those powerful words 
were the tried weapons of a warrior who had proved 
them on many battle-fields with many foes, of a 
commander who by them had many a time rallied 
the wavering forces of the Church. On two great 
campaigns Damaris dwelt, especially the first — the 
warfare which had ended in the victory of Chalce- 
don. Damaris told the story how the great letter of 


BELEAGUERED AQUILEIA. 19I 

Leo, called the “ Tome,’' was planted as a battering- 
ram against the heresies of the Latrocinium, the 
‘‘robber-council ” of Ephesus ; the letter addressed 
to the Council through the good Bishop Flavian of 
Constantinople, which he was never suffered to 
read, the letter being drowned in the furious cries 
of the heretics, who with fierce blows and buffet- 
ings actually did Bishop Flavian himself to death. 
But that defeat, she said, had been repaired by the 
victory of the ancient Catholic faith at Chalcedon, 
on the Asiatic shore opposite Constantinople. 
The great Council assembled there enthusiastically 
welcomed Leo’s letter, and cried with one voice — 
“ This we all believe ! Peter has spoken by Leo ! 
This is the true faith ! This is the faith of the 
Fathers.” And with the story of that battle was 
linked a touch of tender feeling, the only record left 
of Leo’s having shed tears. The Empress Placidia 
wrote from Rome to her niece the Empress Pulcheria 
at Constantinople, that when Leo was imploring her 
to bring about the assembling of the great Council 
of Chalcedon to reverse the fatal decision of 
Ephesus, so full was his heart of the truth he was 
defending, that “ he could scarcely speak for tears.” 

The second campaign of which Damaris told 
the story was that with the Manicheans, in their 
two divisions of false asceticism and false free- 
dom. These battles he fought in Rome, upholding 
against the ascetics, who crept about with sad 
countenances and sordid garments, the truth that 
“every creature of God is good, and to be enjoyed 
with thanksgiving ; ” on the other hand, contending 
against the licentious, who, declaring the body 


192 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


to be essentially evil, regarded whatever evil was 
done by it as indifferent, and thus fell into frightful 
depths of cruelty and impurity, and repressing 
them with resolute severity, or driving them from 
the city they polluted, as those smitten with a 
malignant or infectious disease. 

It was with no shadows that Leo fought, but 
for the foundations of Christian faith and human 
morality ; to preserve for the Church her Divine 
and human Christ, His Divine omnipotent love, 
His suffering human sympathy ; to preserve for 
the world the sacredness of family life, the pure 
love of husband and wife, of father, mother, and 
child, the Divine creation of the body as well as 
the soul. For in those days paganism was scarcely 
dead, or, at all events, scarcely crumbled into 
harmless dust, with powerless poetic shades, noise- 
lessly gliding around their former haunts ; but still 
retaining in death a deadly malaria of corruption 
and disease. 

Leo’s fervent words Ethne found, more and 
more, were no mere holiday strains of soothing 
or exciting music, but a clarion call making no un- 
certain sound, summoning for the perpetual battle 
with sloth and selfishness, with the paralysis of 
hopelessness or of lazy content, with sin and 
wrong within and without. 

In the sonorous, sententious Latin, Leo’s strong 
words rang out, in the grand language of law and 
war which held its own so long in the Church, 
which at that time had been softened into none 
of its daughter-tongues, but stood, amidst the 
countless, shifting dialects of the barbarians, the 


BELEAGUERED AQUILEIA. 


193 


one great language of law and literature, and of 
the Christian worship of the West. Leo himself 
knew no other ; of Greek he was ignorant, or, at 
least, did not speak or write it His letters had to 
be translated for the Eastern Church. 

From Damaris Ethne began indeed to learn 
something of her native Greek, but as yet only as 
a beautiful foreign language. Latin was becom- 
ing to her familiar as a mother-tongue, and she 
listened enrapt as Leo spoke in the great basi- 
licas words such as these: '‘Templum Dei sumus, 
si Spiritus Dei habitat in nobis. Plus est quod 
fidelis suo habet animo quam quod miratur ccelo ” 
— words which gained a double significance and 
force, because, like so many of Leo’s utterances, 
they were watchwords, they were weapons used 
against a lingering paganism which made many 
turn in idolatrous worship towards the sun, on the 
very steps of the Christian basilica. 

And again — ‘‘ Oh, man, recognize the dignity of 
thy nature ! Remember that thou art made in 
the image of God ; once corrupted in Adam, now 
moulded anew in Christ.” 

She listened with eager delight to Leo’s “ seven 
steps” of the Beatitudes: the first, Poverty of 
Spirit. ‘‘ He commends the humility of souls, 
rather than the indigency of faculties.” Humility, 
he admitted, might be easier for the poor than for 
the rich, “ nevertheless,” he said, ‘‘ in many of the 
rich a mind is found which uses riches not to 
swell the tumour of pride, but to do works of 
loving-kindness, that is, counts it the greatest 
gain to relieve the miseries of others.” 

N 


194 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

Again, of another of those ‘‘ steps of the Beati- 
tudes, of the “hungering and thirsting after right- 
eousness,” Leo said, “ It is with God Himself man 
would be filled.” To love righteousness is nothing 
else than to love God. “ Nihil aliud est diligere 
justitiam quam amare Deum.” And when he 
reached the last of those seven upward steps, 
fervently he spoke of the purity of heart which 
cleanses the mirror (of the heart) to see and to 
reflect God, “whose reward is to see Him not in 
a mirror darkly, but face to face.” The fine 
balance of his words throbbed on the heart like 
the vibrations of a church bell. 

“ In Christ,” he proclaimed, “ we are all one. 
All the regenerate in Christ the sign of the Cross 
constitutes kings, the unction of the Holy Spirit 
consecrates priests, in order that, besides that 
special service of our ministry, all the whole body 
of spiritual and rational Christians should recog- 
nize themselves to be partakers of royal race, 
and of sacerdotal office. For what is so royal 
as a soul subject to God and ruler of the body ? 
And what is so sacerdotal as to dedicate to God 
a pure conscience, and the sacrifices {Jiostias) of a 
spotless piety from the altar of the heart ? ” 



CHAPTER XVIL 

A RETREAT WITH ST. LEO THROUGH LENT 
AND EASTER. 

PRING, with its wealth of beauty on the 
earth, and its Lenten discipline in the 
Church, was slowly passing away in 
Rome ; and all the time Aquileia was 
holding out through the three months’ agony of 
her siege, a perpetual reminder and symbol to the 
household on the Aventine of the spiritual conflict 
to be waged always by all. For Marius, their 
own Marius, was there, in what might prove the 
last death-struggle of civilization and Christianity, 
or might prove the travail-pangs of the birth of a 
new world of life and light. And now the fast of 
Lent was deepening into the shadows of Geth- 
semane, and the Passion-tide was bringing the 
pathos and strength of the Cross ; and again the 
voice of Bishop Leo rang through the basilicas 
with its deep, inspiring tones. 

‘"So it is, dearly beloved, that the true ground 
of Christian hope is the Cross of Christ. Whilst- 
the blindness of the Jew does not see what is 



196 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


Divine in Christ Jesus, and the wisdom of the 
Gentiles despises what is human ; whilst the former 
speak deprecatingly of the Lord’s glory, and the 
latter assume airs of pride about His lowliness, we 
adore the Son of God equally in His own might 
and in our infirmity.” 

As Ethne listened, to her, Jew and Gentile were 
no lifeless, technical expressions ; her heart went 
up to God for Miriam and Eleazar, that they 
might look up, and looking, be no longer blind, 
but see the love which is the glory of God. Again, 
in Leo’s words, she prayed “ for that nation by 
whom the Lord had been crucified, and desired 
that mercy might be obtained by that people, on 
account of whose stumbling we have received the 
grace of reconciliation.” 

Of the conflict in Gethsemane Leo said — ‘'The 
lower will gave way to the higher, and it was 
shown to us what may be prayed for by one in 
distress, and what ought not be granted by the 
Healer. For since we know not what to pray for 
as we ought, and it is good for us that what we 
wish should not for the most part take place, when 
we seek for what would hurt us, our good and 
righteous Lord is merciful in refusing it. There- 
fore, when our Lord had by threefold prayer 
settled the mode of putting our own wills right. 
He said to His disciples, ' Sleep on now and take 
your rest.’ ” 

And the three women — mother, sister, and bride 
— in the agony of their Gethsemane of dread and 
longing for thoir beloved, at Aquileia or in all the 
perils of their journeys by sea and land, listening 


A RETREAT WITH ST. LEO. 


197 


to those words of pardon and peace, comforted one 
another, and went home that night, and prayed 
Thy will be done, and slept and took their rest. 

Even for Judas Leo had a word of sympathy, 
recognizing the yearning of the Master even for 
the traitor. 

“From this man,’' he said, “was withheld no 
condescension, lest some vexation should give him 
the motive for crime ; for after the Lord had died 
for all, perhaps even this man might have found 
mercy if he had not hurried to his death.” 

And so the tide of tender, sacred adoration 
flowed deeper and higher on through the days 
of the Passion, without a touch of morbid, melo- 
dramatic sensation, or of weak introspection. “ The 
Festival of our Lord’s Passion,” as he called it, 
“ suffers us not to be silent amid our exulting bursts 
of spiritual joy. P'or since the prophet says, ‘ Seek 
His face evermore,’ no one ought to presume 
that he has found the whole of what he is seek- 
ing, lest by seeking to advance we fail to draw 
near.” 

“The lowliness we see in God amazes us more 
than the power; we find it harder to grasp the 
emptying of the Divine Majesty than the carrying 
up on high the form of a servant. 

“ He shed righteous blood which was to be both 
the ransom and the cup of life {^pretium et po- 
cubini) for the reconciliation of the world. Not 
a reluctant victim, but a willing sacrifice. For 
the nature which in us was ever guilty, in Him 
suffered, innocent and free. 

“What is inflicted by ferocity is welcomed by 


198 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


free-will, so that the audacity of the crime com- 
pletes the work of the Eternal will. 

‘‘ He submitted Himself to the impious hands of 
infuriated men, who were busy with their own 
wickedness, and were doing the behests of the 
Redeemer. Even towards those who were killing 
Him, so strong was His feeling of tenderness, that 
in His prayer to the Father from the Cross, He 
asked not that He should be avenged, but that 
they should be pardoned. 

“ The might of that prayer, ‘ Father, forgive 
them,’ had this result, that the hearts of many 
who said, ‘ Let His blood be on us and our chil- 
dren,’ were converted by the preaching of Peter 
the Apostle, and in one day three thousand were 
baptized ; and they all became of one heart and 
of one soul, and ready to die for Him Whose 
Crucifixion they had demanded. 

‘‘ He was not only wont to heal bodily infirm- 
ities, but the wounds of sickly souls, saying to the 
paralytic, ‘ Son, be of good cheer, thy sins be 
forgiven thee.’ 

“ For He, without any infirmities of sin, took on 
Him all the infirmities that come from sin ; so 
that he lacked not the sensations of hunger and 
thirst, of sleep and weariness, of sorrow and weep- 
ing, and endured the cruelest pains, even to the 
extremity of death. For no one could be loosed 
from the entangling nets of mortality, unless He 
in Whom the nature of man was innocent allowed ^ 
Himself to be put to death by the hands of the 
ungodly.” 

And again, lest that sacred season should be- 


A RETREAT WITH ST. LEO. I99 

come the mere commemoration of the dead, and 
not the communion of the living, Leo said — ‘‘We 
ought to honour the Lord's Passover as present, 
rather than remember the Passover as passed." 

Again — “ He it is V/ho, making no exception 
of any nation, forms out of every nation under 
heaven one flock of holy sheep, and is daily per- 
forming what He has promised in the words, 
‘And other sheep I have which are not of this 
fold, them also I must bring; and they shall hear 
My voice, and they shall be one flock and one 
Shepherd.' 

“For although it is to blessed Peter in the first 
instance that He says, ‘ Feed My sheep,' yet the 
care of all the sheep actually belonging to all the 
shepherds is under the direction of the one Lord ; 
and those who are on the rock He nourishes in 
such pleasant, well-watered pastures, that number- 
less sheep, strengthened with the fulness of love, 
hesitate not themselves to die for the name of the 
Shepherd, even as the Good Shepherd Himself 
was pleased to lay down His life for the sheep. 
He it is in Whom not only the glorious courage 
of martyrs has a share, but also the faith of all 
who are new-born. 

“The fiery sword by which the Land of Life 
was shut in has been quenched by the sacred 
blood of Christ. 

“ Before the true Light the gloom of the old 
^ night has given way. The Christian people are 
invited to the riches of Paradise ; and to all the 
regenerate has been laid open a path of return to 
the lost P'atherland, if only no one causes that 


200 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


way to be closed against himself, which could 
be opened to the faith of the robber.’’ 

Ethne’s thoughts went back to Dewi the pirate. 

So the forty days of the fast and the week of 
the Passion passed on, and the lives of Christians 
were gathered into the life and death of Christ ; 
until at the close the grave voice of Leo, as a 
faithful leader of souls, led the people from the 
contemplation of the Sufferer into the fellowship of 
His sufferings. 

“ If it was a grievous offence to neglect the 
Paschal Festival, it is more dangerous to take 
our place in Church assemblies whilst we are not 
gathered into the fellowship of our Lord’s Passion. 
For who does really honour Christ as having suf- 
fered, died, and been raised again, save he who 
also suffers, dies, and rises again with Christ ? 
These events are carried on in the children of 
the Church. The warfare is perpetual, the enemy 
malignant and strong as ever. Here then, at the 
Cross, let the Christian station himself, where 
Christ lifted him up with Himself ; and to that 
point let him direct all his life, where he knows 
human nature was saved. For the Passion of our 
Lord is prolonged even to the end of the world ; 
and as in His saints He is honoured and loved, 
and as in the poor He is fed and clothed, so in all 
who suffer for righteousness’ sake He suffers too. 
Unless, indeed, we are to think that since faith 
has been multiplied all over the world, all 
the persecutions and all the conflicts which raged 
against the blessed martyrs have come to an end ; 
as though the necessity of taking up the Cross 


A RETREAT WITH ST. LEO. 


201 


had been incumbent only on them. But very 
different is the experience of pious men who are 
serving God, and very different the witness of the 
Apostle. ‘All who’resolve to live godly in Christ 
Jesus shall suffer persecution.’ By which sen- 
tence he is proved to be sadly lukewarm and 
indolent who is attacked by no ^persecution. For 
none but those who love the world can be at peace 
with it ; and there is ‘ no fellowship at any time 
between iniquity and righteousness,’ no concord 
between falsehood and truth, no agreement of 
darkness with light. It is safer for man to have 
earned the devil’s enmity than his friendship ; 
therefore the wise souls who have learned to fear 
and love our Lord do not stoop either to dread 
their foes or to do them homage. For they 
prefer God’s will, ever, to themselves, and love 
themselves all the better, inasmuch as for the love 
of God they love themselves not. 

“ For in those who, after the Apostle’s example, 
chastise the body and bring it into servitude, the 
same enemies are being despised by the same 
courage, and even now the world is being over- 
come by Christ.” 

At length the light of Easter Day broke in on 
Christian Rome, the first Easter Ethne had ever 
spent in a city, had ever spent in Christendom. The 
joy of the festival swept her away in its great tide, 
the bells pealing from every basilica, the stately 
Ambrosian hymns filling the churches, the streets, 
and the homes with their grave and exulting music. 
The morning broke with the ^'Aurora lucis rutilat'^ 
and the “ Hie est dies verus DeVd The voices of 


202 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


priests and people, in what was then the vulgar 
tongue of all, rose high in the “ Ad coenam Agni 
Providi.” 

“ The Supper of the Lamb to share, 

We come in raiment white and fair,” 

And still through all, penetrating and rising above 
all the tides of sound, sounded the deep voice of 
Leo. Through the Passion-tide he had been preach- 
ing to them the duty of the taking up the Cross of 
Christ, that their actual life might enshrine within it 
the Paschal solemnity. ‘‘ If then, dearly beloved,'*’ 
he said, “ we believe in our hearts what we profess, 
we also have been raised the third day, for ‘ ye are 
dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.’ Let 
the people of God acknowledge themselves to be a 
new creation in Christ Jesus, and, with souls on the 
watch, understand Him by Whom they have been 
apprehended, and Whom they may apprehend. 

‘‘ Let not the things that have been made new 
return to the old state which abideth not ; and let 
not him who put his hand to the plough give up 
his work, but fix his attention on what he is sowing, 
not looking back to what he has left.” 

Again — Though the rolling away of the stone, 
the emptying of the sepulchre, the laying aside 
the linen, the shining of the angels, did abundantly 
establish the reality of our Lord’s Resurrection, yet 
He mercifully appeared to the women ; He suffered 
Himself to be handled with careful and inquisitive 
touch by those of whom doubt was taking hold.” 

Thus the faithful voice led the people on through 
Easter to the Ascension. Very quiet were the 


A RETREAT WITH ST. LEO. 20$ 

words, not exhausting the joy in a burst of rapture, 
but leading it onward and upward in an ever- 
rising tide of certainty and victory too deep for 
sound or foam '' ; very quiet, quiet and strong as 
the first flood-tide of the first joy of the first 
Easter. 

Nor did he forget the doubt, the heavy weight 
of apprehension, the slow reviving to faith of the 
hearts of the disciples benumbed by sorrow ; the 
magnitude of the weight which gives the true 
measure of the power which lifted it. 

For the death of Christ,’" he said, “ had sorely 
disturbed the hearts of the disciples, and a kind 
of torpon of distrust had slowly crept into minds 
oppressed by sorrow, on account of the humiliation 
of the Cross, the yielding up of the spirit, the burial 
of the lifeless body. 

“For when the holy women in the gospel history 
had announced to the disciples that the stone was 
rolled away from the tomb, that the body was not 
in the sepulchre, and that angels bore witness that 
the Lord was alive, their words seemed to the 
apostles and disciples as idle tales ; and surely this 
uncertainty would in nowise be allowed by the 
Spirit of Truth to exist in the hearts of his preachers, 
unless their trembling anxiety and inquiring hesi- 
tation had laid the foundation of our faith. It was 
for our perturbations and our dangers that provision 
was being made in the case of the apostles ; we, 
in them, were being instructed against the calum- 
nies of the impious, and against the triumphs of 
the world's wisdom ; we have been taught by their 
seeing, we have heard by their hearing. Let us 


204 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

give thanks to the Divine Providence, and to that 
necessary tardiness of our holy fathers. Doubts 
were felt by them, that no doubts might be felt 
by us. 

Those days, dearly beloved, between the Resur- 
rection and the Ascension did not pass away in an 
inactive course ; but in them great and sacred truths 
were confirmed, great mysteries were revealed. To 
the Magdalene He said, ‘ Touch me not, for I am 
not yet ascended to My Father;’ that is, ‘I will 
not have thee come to Me corporeally, to recognize 
Me by the sensations of the flesh ; I am putting 
thee off to something loftier, I am preparing thee 
for something greater. When I shall have ascended 
to My Father, then thou shalt handle Me more 
perfectly and more truly, being about to apprehend 
what thou touchest not, and to believe what thou 
seest not.’ When He took Himself away to the 
majesty of the Father, He began in an ineffable 
manner to be more present in His Divinity. And 
a truly great and unspeakable cause of rejoicing it 
was, when, in the presence of that holy multitude, 
the nature of manhood was ascending above the 
dignity of all celestial creatures, to pass above the 
angelic ranks, and to be elevated above the high 
seats of the archangels ; and not to let any degree 
of loftiness be a limit to its advancement, until it 
should be received to sit down with the Eternal 
Father, and associated in the throne with His glory, 
to Whose nature it is united in the Son. Since 
then Christ’s Ascension is our advancement, and 
whither the glory of the Head is gone before, 
thither is it the hope of the body to be summoned. 


A RETREAT WITH ST. LEO. 


205 


let us, dearly beloved, exult with befitting joys and 
devout thanksgiving. For to-day have we not only 
been confirmed in the possession of Paradise, but 
in Christ we have penetrated to the heights of 
Heaven, having won through the unspeakable grace 
of. Christ nobler gifts than we had lost through the 
wiles of the devil. 

‘‘ This faith, increased by our Lord’s Ascension, 
and strengthened by the gift of the Holy Spirit, 
has not been overcome by chains, nor imprison- 
ments, nor banishments, nor famine, nor the sword, 
nor the teeth of wild beasts, nor by any torments 
invented by the cruelty of persecutors. For this 
faith, throughout the whole world, not only men 
but even women, not only young boys but tender 
maidens, contended to the shedding of their own 
blood ; whatever had before caused them fear now 
turned into joy. 

“ Let us therefore, dearly beloved, follow after 
charity, without which no one can shine ; that 
through this way of love whereby Christ descended 
to us, we also may be able to ascend to Him, to 
Whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost belong 
honour and glory for ever.” 

So the tide of Christian joy flowed on fuller and 
fuller to Whitsuntide, when the great company of 
the newly baptized gathered around the fonts 
in their white robes, as at Easter. Then Ethne’s 
heart went back to that glad white-robed company 
of neophytes which had gathered around the well, 
beside the little chapel of rough-hewn stones in her 
own island. It was but a year since she had sat 
with her brother in the white robes of baptism 


2o6 attila and his conquerors. 

on the cliff by her father’s house. And in look- 
ing back from the pomp of these great assemblies 
in the stately basilicas on that homely gathering, 
she felt more than ever how glorious had been 
that simple beginning of new life in the new 
world, as at the first Pentecost. “From Him, 
the Holy Spirit,” Bishop Leo said, “comes the 
thirst ; from Him, the calling on the Father ; from 
Him, the groans of suppliants. As in that first 
exultant choir of all human tongues, the majesty 
of the Holy Ghost was present, let the minds of the 
faithful rejoice, because now through all the world 
our God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — is praised 
by the acknowledgment rendered in every tongue, 
and because that indication which was given in the 
form of fire is still witnessed, alike as a work and a 
gift. For the Spirit of Truth Himself makes the 
house of His glory shine with the radiance of His 
own light, and wills not to have in His temple 
anything dark or lukewarm.” 

“The house of His glory also,” Ethne murmured 
to Damaris, “was that little round stone cell of 
Patrick’s building in our Ireland.” 

“The house of His glory is Patrick’s heart and 
Leo’s, and, in their humble place, thine and mine,” 
Damaris said. “ Did not our Leo say, Temphirn 
Dei suimis, si Spiritus Dei habitat in nobis ? 
Greater is what the faithful Christian has in his 
heart than what he wonders at in the heavens.” 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE FALL OF AQUILEIA. 

HUS the great festivals of the Church 
swept on, and spring had conquered 
' winter in the natural and the Christian 
year. 

All through those months the household on the 
Aventine knew that Aquileia was still holding her 
own, and trusted that there also the summer was 
beating back the winter. 

Ethne remembered Orleans, with her brave 
garrison, and her brave aged Bishop Anianus and 
his victorious prayers ; and Lupus with his peace- 
ful victory over Attila at Troyes ; and her hope was 
strong that victory must come for Aquileia also, 
through Aquileia for the Roman world. 

Moreover, one more little volume of waxen 
tablets reached them from Marius, still within the 
unconquered city. 

“ We are holding our own,’’ he wrote ; “ the walls 
still stand unshattered, the heart of the enemy, they 
say, is failing, the besiegers seem to slacken at their 
work. Glorious it will be if this great host is driven 



2o8 attila and his conquerors. 

back, baffled by one faithful stronghold. Despair 
not for us j hope and pray ! 

But they had scarcely read these words of courage 
and hope, when another message brought the fatal 
tidings that Aquileia, the impregnable, had fallen, 
was being razed to the ground and burnt to ashes, 
and, with the terrible Hunnish genius of destruction, 
smitten to the dust never to rise any more. 

A flight of storks had done it ; a flock of harm- 
less, innocent birds had accomplished the ruin of 
Aquileia. 

Just as the assailants were wearying of their 
work, and murmurs of retreat were spreading in the 
camp, and Attila himself was pacing round the 
unbroken walls, moodily meditating whether to go 
or stay, the flapping of wings and the cry of birds 
arrested his attention. He looked up, and saw the 
white storks which had built their nests on the 
roofs of the city soaring high in the air, and alluring 
their callow young to follow them, evidently with 
the intention of abandoning the beleaguered city, 
and, contrary to their usual habits, betaking them- 
selves to the open country. He caught at the 
augury. “ Look there ! he cried to the dispirited 
soldiers ; “ see those birds, whose instinct tells them 
of the future; they are leaving the city which they 
foresee is to perish, the fortress which they know will 
fall.” 

The courage of the Huns revived at his words. 
Once more they pushed their engines up to the 
walls, and plied their slings and catapults ; and the 
walls yielded ; and Aquileia, the impregnable, the 
city of the north wind, fell, as was the fate of 


THE FALL OF AQUILEIA. 20g 

cities that sank beneath the Huns, never to rise 
again. 

There was need indeed now of Leo’s strong words 
in the sorrowful little family on the Aventine. The 
fellowship of the Passion was theirs ; the cup of the 
martyrs was held to their lips. But it was Christ, 
the ever-living, the ever-loving, the all-conquering, 
not himself, that Leo had set before them ; and He, 
‘Hhe Ransom from death, and the Cup of Life” 
et poculuni), would not fail His Christians. 
All else in the world — emperors, armies, generals, 
statesmen — were failing Rome. Would Leo him- 
self fail } 

Leo did not fail ! 

The people of Rome had done well in electing 
him during his absence, and waiting the forty days 
for his return. Every one else among their rulers 
failed them, but not Leo. 

The feeble Valentinian was present in the city; 
he had fled to Rome, it was said, as a safer refuge, 
for the moment, than his Imperial Ravenna, 
enclosed in her marshes. The port of Ravenna on 
the Adriatic was too near the fallen city of Aquileia, 
so long the queen of the Adriatic ; too near the 
hordes of the Huns. Aetius, the great general, the 
Count of Italy, seemed to fail them. The foremost 
place. which he obtained for himself by basely 
betraying his great rival Boniface, Count of Africa, 
had proved no post of ease or real power to him. 
The feeble Emperor himself had become his rival, 
using him (as was afterwards terribly proved) not a 
moment longer than the hour of danger lasted. 
Boniface was dead ; Africa, through his treachery, 


2iO ATTILA AND HlS CONQUERORS. 

was lost to the Empire, to civilization, and, as it 
was proved afterwards, to Christianity ; and Italy lay 
bare to the foe. He himself had become the dread 
and detestation of the weak and wicked courtj and 
now it seemed as if a palsy had fallen on his own 
strong will and clear intellect ; it was rumoured 
that Aetius was counselling the Emperor that they 
should take flight together and abandon Rome to 
her fate. 

Only Leo was left. But Leo stood firm, a rock 
of strength because he stood on the Rock. Still 
his protecting presence and his words of power were 
there — “ Christ Himself has not abandoned the 
care of His beloved flock.’* 

“ Throughout the universal Church Peter is still 
saying day by day, ‘ Thou art the Christ, the Son of 
the Living God ; * and every tongue which confesses 
the Lord is clothed with the majesty of this voice. 
This faith overcomes the devil and dissolves the 
fetters of his captives; those who are torn away 
from the world it engrafts into heaven, and the 
gates of hell cannot prevail against it.” 

And from day to day, in those days of earth- 
quakes and storms, went up the prayer for ever 
associated with Leo’s name and with this great 
conflict — 

“ Grant, O Lord, we beseech Thee, that the course 
of this world may be so peaceably ordered by Thy 
governance, that Thy jChurch may serve Thee in 
all godly quietness, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” 

Never could the world have seemed less peace- 
ably ordered than then ; yet it was indeed not under 
the governance of Valentinian, or of Aetius, or of 


THE FALL OF AQUILEIA. 


2II 


Peter, but of God.‘ Never could there have been 
less external quiet ; but the Church, and Leo, kept 
the “ godly quietness ” within, in the presence of 
God. Never could the waves have seemed more 
likely to overwhelm the Rock than then ; but it 
stood firm as ever. “ Our fathers all ate the same 
spiritual meat, and all drank the same spiritual 
drink, for they drank of that spiritual Rock that 
followed them, and that Rock was Christ/" 

And again from every basilica and every house 
rose Leo"s prayer — “ Grant us the spirit to think 
and do always such things as be rightful, that 
we who cannot do anything that is good without 
Thee, may by Thee be enabled to live according to 
Thy Will."" Leo"s prayers were indeed fulfilled for 
him in the way his inmost soul desired. Of Leo 
personally scarcely a trace is left, as to the persons 
he loved, the life he lived, the death he died ; his 
only monument, the rescue of his Rome, and the 
Rock of the great Apostles great confession of the 
Christ, on which he stood, and which he held for 
the Church. 

Sorely indeed were the strong words of consola- 
tion needed in the household on the Aventine. No 
further sound reached them from Aquileia, no 
record of individual heroism or deliverance. What 
voice indeed could come from ashes and a charnel- 
house } 

The fame of only one act seemed borne above 
that raging storm of murder and rapine ; only one 
name was borne to them through the death-silence 
that succeeded. It was reported that the good and 
beautiful young matron Digna, the friend of their 


212 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


house and of Marius, had covered her head like a 
Roman matron of old, and fromi the tower on the 
walls adjoining her house had plunged into the 
glassy waters of the Natiso which flowed deep and 
strong below, to escape the insults of the Huns. 

When these tidings reached them, for the first 
time Damaris uttered a cry of despair. ‘‘ Alas ! 
alas she said, “too surely our Marius is slain, or 
he would have saved her.’' 

But Fabricius shook his head. 

“ Fond mother's thought ! Against such a flood 
of furious savagery Marius would have been as 
powerless as when he lay a babe in thine arms ; " 
and then, with a flash of the old patrician fire, he 
added, “ It is not Digna only, it is our old Rome, 
who chose death rather than dishonour at Aquileia ; 
our Rome has fallen, she is dead, but never could 
she have perished save by suicide. Our vices have 
killed us. Yet she has fallen fighting to the last, 
not as a slave and captive, but as free and the 
mother of the free. The brave garrison of Aquileia 
could not save our Rome from ruin, but they have 
saved it from the worst dishonour; Digna stands 
for ever as a symbol of her great old glory. And 
Marius, thank God, our Marius was there !" 

But with those words the old man broke down ; 
and the father and mother wept together. 




CHAPTER XIX. 

LEO AND ATTILA — THE RESCUE OF ROME. 

ADLY and slowly after that the terrible 
days and weeks passed on. The g'reat 
festivals of the Church were over. The 
daily festival of the perpetual Eucharist 
indeed went on with its ceaseless pleading* of 
Redeeming death, and ceaseless participation of 
the ever-renewing Life, its blending of triumph and 
of tender tears, ‘‘ Pretium et poculum,’’ for ever. 

And day and night in Ethne's heart Patrick’s 
hymn still made melody — * 

“ Christ in the fort ; Christ on the sea ; Christ 
above, beneath, around, within, for ever.” 

For in Ethne’s heart alone nothing could quench 
the hope that Marius would yet return. 

Still came in, day after day, the tidings of mourn- 
ing, lamentation, and woe. The long resistance 
of Aquileia had enraged the Huns to madness ; 
and her capture and destruction had apparently 
awakened in them an insatiable thirst for blood 
and ruin. For the time even plunder seemed 
subordinate to mere wild waste and ravage. Week 



214 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

by week came the cry of cities sacked and burned 
and laid waste for ever ; Concordia, thirty miles 
from Aquileia, and Altinum. 

Then followed another phase of horror. The 
mere blind fury of revenge seemed at last assuaged ; 
and the hideous savage hordes entered on another 
stage of devastation ; the lust of plunder and of 
drunken orgies seemed to revive and gain the 
upper hand. The rich plains of Lombardy had 
been laid waste, the flourishing cities of the coast 
had been blotted from the earth, and now the great 
cities of the interior, Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, 
Bergamo, Pavia, and finally Milan, appalled by the 
fate of Aquileia, opened their gates, and from these 
came the tidings how the Huns, ‘‘ hacchabantiirl^ 
were holding hideous revels and orgies there night 
and day. Meanwhile Rome herself had virtually no 
walls to defend, no gates to open. Rome, with her 
temples and palaces, each as a city within itself, 
lay absolutely defenceless and bare before the 
Tartar hordes. 

The thunder-cloud drew nearer and nearer, and 
more and more the Aventine household realized 
their utter helplessness. It was reported that 
Aetius was on the point of taking flight with the 
Emperor. But still Leo stood firm, still the prayers 
went up from the basilicas. More and more the 
mother, the sister, and the bride seemed to find 
themselves most at home in the ancient churches 
of the catacombs, by the tombs of the martyrs of 
the early days, as the darkness deepened around 
them ; until, at last, faint rumours began to creep 
into the city, of debate and division in the camp 


LEO AND ATTILA— THE RESCUE OF ROME. 21 5 

of Attila himself. The spell of Rome began to 
work ; too much, his chieftains began to feel, was 
staked on the life of one man. The last royal 
life that had braved the great enchantress, the 
great queen City, had paid the penalty of victory 
hy death. If Attila were to fall as Alaric had 
fallen, some began dimly to feel, who would hold 
his unwieldy empire, his hordes of many divided* 
tribes, together ? Moreover, the inevitable curse of 
polygamy was in Attila's own house. Which of 
all the sons of his many wives would win the 
allegiance of these disorganized hosts ? The great 
defeat and slaughter of the previous year, the 
Hunnenschlacht, on the plains of Chalons, could not 
have been forgotten ; and something stronger than 
defeat in battle was doubtless beginning to dissolve 
the terrific forces of dissolution from within. Cruelty 
and lust and violence cannot create or unite ; man 
remains human through all ; and the avenging of 
such crimes must eventually grow out of the 
crimes themselves. No inspiring loyalty, no sacred 
memories or hopes, no great purpose of patriotism 
or even of conquest, held that vast horde together ; 
nothing but only that one gigantic will. And if 
Attila hurled his life against Rome and conquered, 
and fell, like Alaric, what would become of his 
Huns ? Probably, moreover, this hesitation and 
division of purpose began to invade the heart and 
will even of Attila himself. 

At length the echo of these debates and divisions 
penetrated faintly to Rome itself, and vague sug- 
gestions began to be made of sending an embassy 
to Attila himself, entreating peace. 


2i6 attila and his conquerors. 

But if such an embassy were possible, who would 
risk themselves to be the ambassadors ? Am- 
bassadors had been sent before to Attila from the 
Eastern empire with a secret mission of assassina- 
tion, and he had discovered it ; and the ambassadors 
had barely escaped, through a rare generosity, 
with their lives. Who would venture on such an 
embassy from the Western empire, with such a 
memory of treachery confronting them ? It was 
no mission for a soldier, — a message of abject sub- 
mission and supplication ; — yet to venture on it 
demanded more courage than any battle-field. 

There could have been but one name on the lips 
and in the hearts of all, the name of the man whom 
Rome had waited for those forty days so many 
years before to make him her leader and bishop. 
There was not a hope but in Leo ; not a man besides 
who could be trusted with such a mission, or would 
undertake it. 

And Leo did not fail. He went ; and with him 
two distinguished civilians — Avienus, once a consul, 
and Tregetius, a prefect, to propitiate Attila by two 
high official names, — mere names then, and long 
since, forgotten names, save as adjuncts to Leo. 
In this embassy, once more the names of the 
Emperor, ‘‘ the Senate and People of Rome,’' were 
united, not in a decree but a supplication ; the 
parody of a People and Emperor and the shadow 
of a Senate. But the ambassador was a true 
Roman and a Christian, a genuine man and a 
living saint. And Attila had shown that he re- 
cognized a true man when he encountered him, 
and would listen to a saint when he saw him. 


LEO AND ATTILA— THE RESCUE OF ROME. 21/ 

Silent among the silent multitudes the three 
veiled women, Damaris, Lucia, and Ethne, watched 
the procession leave the northern gate and wind 
along the plain. They felt in their inmost souls 
the depth of humiliation symbolized : an entreaty 
from the Imperial city for mercy from a Tartar 
savage ; an appeal from the Christian Church for 
compassion from a heathen destroyer, the symbol 
of whose worship was a scimitar planted hilt down- 
ward in the earth. But in reality they all felt the 
appeal of Leo was from man to God, from princes 
in their vanity and nothingness “to the Lord of 
those who rule, and the King of those who reign.'' 

Thus once more a Roman was found to throw 
himself into the chasm for the salvation of Rome. 

The suppliant embassy went northward to the 
camp of Attila in Lombardy, to the place where 
the Po and the Mincio meet; and the multitudes of 
Rome dispersed again to their various forms of 
labour or idleness, some of them no doubt, like the 
little company on the Aventine, to the basilicas or 
quiet oratories to pray the great prayer of Christ- 
endom, and the prayers of Leo himself, and to wait. 

They had not long to wait. Attila's movements 
were not slow, nor his decisions vacillating. He 
saw Leo and believed in him. But what can any 
of us say as to the Presence he felt in Leo, or 
round about Leo } Legend has told and Raphael 
has painted in his immortal picture, that he saw 
the apostles Peter and Paul hovering about Leo in 
the air, as the champions of Rome, and that Attila 
and his Huns cowered in terror before the heavenly 
vision. Prosper, Leo's own secretary, tells us 


2i8 attila and his conquerors. 

simply that Leo committed himself to God^ Who 
never fails to aid the labours of thos'e who tnist Him ; 
nor did less ensue than his faith expected!^ Leo, no 
doubt, would scarcely have been surprised at the 
apparition of St. Peter and St. Paul; he certainly 
believed that the honour and primacy of his See 
belonged to Peter and not to himself. But always, 
above and beyond Peter, Leo beheld Christ, never 
relinquishing the care of His beloved flock.” In 
that Presence he lived, and more than once we 
know Attila had recognized that mysterious, super- 
natural Presence in saintly men. The spell of 
Rome may indeed have been upon him, and the 
superstitious dread of the terrible tendency to 
revulsions in the affairs of men, which haunts the 
high places of the world ; perhaps also some natural 
qualms of conscience for the miseries inflicted on 
m.yriads of human creatures, some echo in his 
heart, which was still human, of the cries of tortured 
men and wronged women and innocent babes. All 
this probably wrought for Leo, and also the kinship 
one great man feels for another ; the weight of a 
spirit accustomed to rule, the force of that “ saving 
common-sense ” which often has a persuasiveness 
stronger than genius, and was the genius of 
Leo. 

But it was something mightier than all this, we 
may be sure, which conquered Attila. The very 
best and deepest in us all, however seldom it is 
reached, is after all the strongest. It was the very 
deepest depths in Leo, the depths over which 
broods the living Spirit of God, that met the 
depths of Attila, and moved him irresistibly "to 


LEO AND ATTILA — THE RESCUE OF ROME.. 2 IQ 

think and to do the thing that was rightful,” to 
conquer his own evil will, and spare Rome. 

Rumour says that he veiled his surrender in 
a grim humour which was natural to him, saying, 

I can fight with men, but the wolf and the lion 
(Lupus and Leo) are too much for me.” 

But whatever, the motive, surrender was made. 
The vast host from the eastern wilds turned back 
again eastward, never more to sweep in devastating 
floods over the West ; and Leo returned in peace 
to the Rome he had saved. 

Rome, at all events, did not re^ eive her deliverer 
as Troyes had received the Bishop to whom she 
owed her existence. To the great city which he 
had defended when abandoned by all her natural 
defenders, Leo became thenceforth Rock and 
Refuge, Chief Shepherd, Supreme Ruler, Father, 
Pope. Thenceforth Rome and her Pope were 
identified. The magic of her old Imperial name 
was transferred to him ; the granite of his ancient 
Roman character guarded her. Leo spoke “to the 
City” ; the city still spoke, as no other voice could 
speak, to the world. The “ad Urbem” and “ad 
Orbem ” were thenceforth not to be dissociated. 

We do not hear of any pomp and ovation to do 
him homage on his return. The city was saved ; 
but the salvation was from a humiliation only 
possible through the degradation and corruption 
of the city itself. And this moral degradation 
continued. 



CHAPTER XX. 

AMONG THE HUNS — LEO AND ATTILA. 

UT in the midst of the tide of universal 
rejoicing (as in the midst of the malaria 
of almost universal corruption), one 
little fresh spring of pure and tender 
joy had burst forth for the household on the Avcn- 
tine. The ocean tide might and did ebb back 
from high-water mark; but when it receded, a little 
fountain of sweet fresh water was found welling 
up from other depths below earth and sea, as 
sometimes on the shores of our western seas. 

Slowly, with the uncertain gait of one toiling up 
from the ravine of the shadow of death, Marius 
was creeping up the Aventine, almost spent with 
fatigue. Ethne saw him first from the terrace 
above the gardens. In a moment she was at his 
side, and they were climbing the hill together, 
those two who were thenceforth to make their 
uphill journey together all the way. 

For a moment he clasped her to his heart. 

It is through thee I am here,’’ he said, ''through 
thee that I ever came back at all. It is thou who 
hast given me back my life.” 



AMONG THE HUNS — LEO AND ATTILA. 221 


She could only murmur a few words of Patrick's 
hymn, and then, I always knew He would bring 
thee back ; " and again accepting her support for 
his feeble steps, they moved on till he reached the 
familiar portico with her. 

That evening little more could be said. That he 
was there," as one raised from the dead, and that 
‘‘ He Who brought him back was there," with them 
all, always, to the end, was for the hearts of all 
gladness so complete," that no more could be 
poured in. 

The welcome, the peace of home, the love, old 
and new, and at last the falling asleep, watched by 
his mother’s eyes, as when he was a child, wrought 
wonders in one night. In the evening scarcely 
any eyes but those of the love that had never 
ceased expecting him could have recognized him, 
with the feeble gait, the hollow eyes, the worn, 
pale cheek. In the morning the soul had visibly 
taken her place on the throne again, and he was 
himself. Still the careful nurses rigidly insisted 
on rest, until by the next day he had gathered 
strength to tell his story. 

“ I was in the tower in Aquileia with the Lady 
Digna," he began. ‘‘The yells of the victorious 
Huns were all around us, closer and closer up 
the steps. When she sprang from the tower 
into the river, something like madness seized me, 
as doubtless it had seized her, and I sprang after 
her, with some wild hope of saving her. I sank 
and then rose, and seemed to grasp her robe, and 
swam, keeping desperate hold of it, and then 
clutched something with one hand, which may 


222 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

have been a post for fastening boats to on the 
other side of the river. Then something struck 
my head, whether a javelin from the Huns or the 
strong current dashing me against the point of 
rock I know not. I could only cry, ‘ Christe 
Domine, miserere nobis ! ’ Then I became un- 
conscious, and when I awoke in the night, hours 
afterwards, I was stretched on the opposite bank 
of the river, alone.'’ 

‘‘Then thy ‘Miserere’ may have been the last 
sound on her dying ear ? ” said Damaris. 

“ I know not,” he replied. “ At all events, the 
mercy for which I cried, the Christ on Whom I 
called, was there, and not uncaring or asleep.” 

After a pause he went on — 

“ I was alone. It was night, but the river and 
all the land around were lit up by the flames of 
the burning city. And the silence of night was 
broken by exulting yells of vengeance, by cries of 
agony and vain entreaty, and, worse almost than 
all, by the hideous laughter of bacchanalian orgies. 

“ Something must have wounded me, for my 
head and hands were bleeding, and I was faint 
with loss of blood. But I contrived to creep 
under the shelter of an empty cattle-shed in the 
desolate fields ; and there I lay, I know not how 
long — lay there,” he continued, turning to Ethne, 
“ until I was saved through thee. . 

“A poor woman of the Huns was gathering 
sticks for a fire, and seeing me lying there, seem- 
ing, I suppose, at the point of death, she had 
compassion on me. She went and brought me 
food and drink ; and then in broken Latin, such as 


AMONG THE HUNS — LEO AND ATTILA. 223 

the barbarian tribes who settle on our frontiers 
learn to speak, she said, ‘ A Roman woman saved 
my son. I will save thee.' Her son was a brother 
of the dying boy beside whom I saw thee first at 
Orleans. The brother was among the wounded 
Huns left in the city when the siege was raised, 
one of those enemies whom Bishop Anianus 
desired the Christian women to succour, and thee 
among them. By degrees, as she tended me, the 
whole story came out ; and, from her description, it 
could have been no one but thyself who hadst also 
ministered to the. brother of the boy who died 
witli his hand in thine. She was a woman of 
some consideration among the Huns. I should 
hardly have been spared but for her pleading. 
They had at that time no use for captive slaves, to 
carry about and feed, and no spark of mercy for 
Roman soldiers ; although I think those of us who 
shared in the defence of Aquileia, when once the 
first deadly rage of vengeance was assuaged in 
blood, were held even by them in a kind of rough 
honour. Again and again I heard men among 
them say, ‘ If all Roman cities had been like 
Aquileia we should never have been here ; but we 
and Rome might have been not foes but friends.' 

“Also," Marius continued, turning to his mother, 
“I told her of thee, and," with a lowered voice 
to Ethne, “of thee and our betrothal, and that 
touched her heart. As my strength returned, I 
was able to be of some service to her, and she 
insisted on bringing me to the notice of her king, 
Attila himself. It was perilous, for he has frightful 
streaks of savage fierceness and haughtiness, not 


224 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

blending, but violently jarring, with occasional 
vibrations of affection and kindliness, and flashes 
of grim humour and wit, all crude and unmixed, so 
that you can never tell which you will find upper- 
most. Moreover, as you all know now, he has a 
wonderful keen eye and a genuine honour for 
truth, the truth of which he has had so little 
experience amongst us. And I suppose he felt in 
some way that I was true. So it happened that I 
was much about his court and in his presence, and 
saw strange and unexpected things in Attila and 
in his Huns. For you were right, mother,’' he 
went on, ‘‘there are no ‘half beasts’ in the 
creation of God, though, alas ! there are half devils, 
fallen as the original devils of old. And you were 
right,” he added, looking at Ethne ; “ if all the 
Christians Attila had met had been saints, indeed 
had been ordinarily good or true, who can say 
what Attila might have become ? 

“ He has a royal contempt for mere tinsel and 
glitter. While his courtiers prank themselves in 
the borrowed splendours of the vanquished, he 
still wears his old Scythian skins and tanned 
leather. While they emulate the banquets of the 
Imperial court, he lives on the simplest, roughest 
food. It is said he never eats bread, but only 
meat, and that often half raw.” 

“An independence of cookery which scarcely 
disproves his likeness to the beasts,” interposed 
Fabricius, with a grave smile ; to which Marius 
made no retort. 

“ I saw Attila among his sons,” he said, “ at a 
banquet, accompanied by wild music, with pane- 


AMONG THE HUNS — LEO AND ATTILA. 225 

gyncs on him and his victorious warriors and chiefs, 
no doubt as harmonious and satisfactory to the 
Huns as the strains of Greece or the rhetoric of 
our Sidonius Apollinaris to our Emperor. But 
Attila did not seem to heed them. All the time 
his heart and thoughts seemed set on a young lad, 
his youngest son, as he kept caressing his curly 
hair with his hand, and jesting with the child who 
will, he hopes, succeed him. 

‘‘And then came the strange, grotesque pomp 
of his enthronement in the Imperial palace at 
Milan, the palace from which Constantine issued 
the edict proclaiming Christianity the religion of the 
Empire, and where the great Theodosius listened 
to Ambrose. 

“ There is a painting on the palace walls which 
greatly offended Attila, representing the Scythian 
(or some barbarian) chieftains crouching in homage 
(and some of them stretched vanquished and slain) 
before the two golden thrones of the two Emperors 
of the East and West. As an expiation he com- 
manded a Roman or Greek artist, not to paint this 
picture out, but, leaving it to satirize to itself, to 
paint opposite to it another picture representing 
the two Emperors of East and West, laden with 
sacks full of the gold coin of the tribute to the 
Huns, humbly emptying them at the feet of 
Attila. Happily for me, my mother, I have not 
the genius of thy forefathers, and could not paint ; 
otherwise a difficult dilemma might have been set 
before me. But all the time I was in the camp of 
the Huns, and at the court of Attila, I could not but 
observe an uneasiness and uncertainty and vague 


226 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

dread ever growing and gathering over the rude 
warriors, and even over Attila himself. They 
seemed satiated with slaughter, and in some dim 
way under a spell, afraid of losing their plunder, 
•afraid of the avenging power of the civilization 
they were ruining, afraid of the ancient names of 
Italy and Rome, haunted by the fate of Alaric, 
our Rome’s last conqueror. Not a few of the 
bravest even ventured to suggest that the host 
should return beyond the Danube to enjoy their 
spoils and employ the captives they had already 
won. 

‘‘And then,” he concluded, “as you all know, 
came the embassy from suppliant Rome. Every 
ambition of Attilas for the recognition of his 
power and glory was gratified in this appeal for 
mercy from the humbled Empire, from the help- 
less City which had so long been mistress of the 
nations. Leo was at the head of the procession, 
simple and stately, representative of the great 
Christian Church. 

“Never to my dying day can I forget that 
confronting of the worshippers of the scimitar, 
the conquerors by force, and the disciple of 
the Crucified, the conqueror by the Cross ; — one 
more great incident in the long warfare between 
the forces of division and of peace, of good and 
evil, as real as that in which ‘ Satan as lightning 
fell from heaven,’ and perhaps not more silent. 

“ On one side the great barbaric host of the 
mighty king who had conquered and devastated 
Europe from the Euxine to the Baltic, in all its 
savage pomp and pride ; on the other, the little 


AMONG THE HUNS — LEO AND ATTILA. 22/ 

company of peace-makers, led by our Leo, his tall, 
slight figure arrayed in the pontifical robes, his 
abundant silvery hair flowing down from beneath 
the silken, gold- embroidered mitre, the purple 
chasuble, the pallium with the small red cross on 
the shoulder and the large red cross on the breast, 
Roman courage and dignity blended with sacred 
majesty in his look and bearing. For some 
minutes there was a hush of expectation and 
suspense ; then followed the brief speech between 
Attila and Leo. What was said has not been 
told. Some report, as no doubt you have heard, 
that Attila said he could fight with men, but not 
with the wolf and the lion (Lupus and Leo). But 
I believe and am sure that, whatever he said, Attila 
felt he was face to face with a courage nobler than 
his own, with a Power to save mightier than his to 
destroy — felt indeed that he could fight with men, 
but not with God. 

‘‘And so it was that Leo won the day. The 
countless hosts of the destroyers went back with 
Attila to their own place among their wilder- 
nesses ; the little embassy of the peace-makers 
went back with Leo to Rome. And Rome is 
saved.'' 



CHAPTER XXL 

ON THE SABINE HILLS. 

was not many days after the rescue of 
Rome from the Huns by Leo that 
Baithene came back from Ireland. 
He found the city full of noise and 
stir, the people crowding to the Circensian games ; 
the Coliseum echoing to the shouts of the spectators 
of the chariot races, athletic games, and dramatic 
performances. 

Rome had not indeed received her deliverer as 
for a time misguided Troyes had received the 
Bishop who had risked his life for her. But her 
response to the great gift of her rescue was far 
from satisfactory to Leo. 

When Baithene reached the Aventine, he found 
the family absent in the basilica, at the Festival of 
St. Peter and St. Paul. He followed them thither, 
and through the betrothal veils recognized Ethne 
and Lucia, with Damaris, Fabricius, and Marius. 
And resounding through the lofty pillared spaces, 
once more he heard the voice of Leo in grave 
warning and remonstrance. 




ON THE SABINE HILLS. 


229 


“ The religious devotion, beloved,” he said, in 
deep and mournful tones, ‘‘with which, at the time 
of our chastening and our liberation, all the people 
of the faithful flowed together to render thanks 
to God in acts of praise was soon neglected by 
almost all. This has given sore pain to my heart, 
and has also smitten it with fear. For the peril is 
great when men are ungrateful to God, and by 
their forgetfulness of His benefits show that they 
neither feel compunction at reproof, nor rejoice in 
their remission and pardon. Therefore, beloved, 
I dread lest this voice of the prophet should be 
applicable to us — ‘ I have scourged them and they 
have not mourned, they would not accept correc- 
tion ’ ; for how can correction have been accepted 
by hearts so turned away ? It shames me to say 
it, but it is necessary not to be silent ; more is 
rendered to demons than to apostles, and insane 
spectacles are more frequented than the shrines of 
the martyrs. Who has restored this city to safety ? 
Who has rescued her from captivity ? Who has 
defended her from slaughter ? Is it the games of 
the circus ? or is it the care of the saints, through 
which the sentence of Divine condemnation was 
softened, so that we who had deserved wrath might 
be preserved for pardon ? 

“ I beseech you, let this saying of the Saviour 
touch your hearts, Who, when by His might and 
His compassion He had cleansed ten lepers, 
observed that only one of them came back to give 
thanks ; signifying that those ungrateful ones, 
although by an act of pity they had obtained 
health of body, retained, through their impiety, 


230 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

disease in their souls. Lest such a sentence should 
be pronounced, beloved, on you, turn ye back and 
consider, and understand the wonderful things that 
He has deigned to accomplish for us ; that, no 
longer attributing our liberation (as some impious 
ones have done) to the operation of the stars, but 
to the unspeakable mercy of Almighty God, Who 
deigned to soften the hearts of the furious bar- 
barians, we may unite together in full vigour of 
faith in the commemoration of such a benefit. 
Grave negligence must be remedied by testimonies 
of gratitude all the greater.” Then tenderly re- 
minding them of the sufferings of the saints and 
martyrs, Peter and Paul, whom they were com- 
memorating, he commended them to the mercy of 
God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

It was in the porch of the basilica, as the 
congregation dispersed, that the family of the 
Aventine first met again. When they reached the 
gardens of the palace, and sat in the shade of the 
ilexes, there was much to hear and tell. From 
Ireland the tidings were full of joy. The Irish 
chieftain, on hearing of the welcome of his son and 
daughter in the Christian household at Rome, had 
laid aside his last faint hesitation as to embracing 
Christianity, and had been baptized by Patrick at 
the great Easter Baptism. He and his wife wel- 
comed Lucia to their hearts and kingdom ; they 
trusted to receive her as a daughter in the place 
of the daughter they were willing to give as a 
bride to Marius, however sore the parting might be 
to them. They only stipulated that, as soon as 
might be in those perilous days, the four might 


ON THE SABINE HILLS. 


231 


come back to Ireland ; Baithene and Lucia to 
remain as the joy of their home, and the stay and 
strength of the clan ; and Ethne and Marius to 
sojourn there as long as they could be spared from 
their Roman home. Also they desired that Baithene 
should for a time take a fair dwelling of his own 
in Rome, to receive his sister there, that she might 
be led thence, as became a lady of free and noble 
birth, to the house of her bridegroom. And they 
consented, they even generously wished, for the 
sake of their own country and people, that Baithene 
and Lucia should remain a year or two in Rome, 
that he might bring home to their far-ofif Ireland 
the learning and training of that great city, which 
they understood to have been so long the centre 
of the world's greatness and wisdom, and the 
channel of Divine wisdom and order to the 
Christian Church. 

Thus in the midst of that tumultuous, tormented 
age, began one of those quiet melodies of love and 
rest which are always flowing on in soft musical 
tones through the din of storms and wars, scarcely 
heard at all in the great orchestral chorus of 
history, yet without which the world itself, and 
therefore its history, would soon fall back into 
chaos and cease to be. 

First came the betrothal. Fabricius and Damaris 
kept to ancient customs as far as might be, Damaris 
leaning to the rites of her Greek forefathers, and 
both of them to the customs of those early Greek 
Christians of Rome, to whom the Greek inscriptions 
of more than two centuries in the catacombs bore 
witness. The ceremonies of the veiling and the 


232 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

ring- were therefore celebrated at the betrothal, 
which took place in the Oratory of the Ecclesia 
Domestica on the Aventine. There also were 
given the dowry by the fathers of the brides, the 
Irish chieftain and Fabricius, with the Arrhae” or 
pledge in money ; there also the hands of the 
betrothed were joined, the sacred kiss given, and 
the ring placed on the hand of the bride, a signet 
ring, in token that she should henceforth seal and 
have charge of her husband’s property ; and there, 
finally, they received the solemn benediction of the 
priest. Afterwards the betrothed separated, Lucia 
returning to her father s house, and Ethne going 
with Baithene to a country house belonging to 
Fabricius, among the Sabine hills, high amidst 
the wooded mountains above the town of Subiaco. 

This separation was considered as especially 
important in their case, in order to efface all traces 
of captivity and bondage ; that the marriage might 
be recognized as between those who always had 
been and were for ever free men and free women. 
For so deep and enduring was the degradation 
stamped legally and socially on the slave, that 
there had been a prolonged contest, scarcely yet 
decided, whether marriage between slaves was to be 
treated as legal marriage at all ; whilst marriage 
between a free woman and a slave was regarded as 
in a sense a crime ; and marriage between a free 
man and a slave woman was liable to be annulled 
at any moment. It was therefore arranged that 
the forty days between the betrothal and the 
marriage festival, customarily spent together by 
the betrothed apart from each other, should be 


ON THE SABINE HILLS. 233 

Spent together by the brother and sister in the 
villa on the Sabine hills. 

To Ethne, and indeed to both of them, those 
days were like a fresh baptism into childhood. 
The long year of humiliation and terrible suspense 
was over ; to their unspeakable joy their father 
had become a Christian ; and their parents in 
Ireland were content. Bright visions of re-union 
with his people were before Baithene; and before 
Ethne hope of a life of noble service with him to 
whom her heart was given. But she was to devote 
these weeks to the dear companion of all her past 
life, in an island of rest between the past and the 
future, in the midst of the voyage of life. 

As the great Roman thoroughfare, the Via 
Valeria, branched off into the narrower road along 
the banks of the Anio, and climbed up the 
mountains by Sublaqueum and the Roman villa of 
Nero, her spirits rose at every step. As they 
passed picturesque village after village perched for 
safety on the crests of the hills, or plunged deeper 
and deeper into the mountains and among the 
luxuriant forests, her whole spirit seemed to rise 
and breathe the bracing air of the heights. The 
country house was comparatively simple ; the decor- 
ations and conveniences of the villa of the Roman 
noble, hot and cold baths, halls and corridors with 
mosaic floors, and quiet inner chambers, were 
there ; but the corridor in front was like a trellised 
rustic pergola, with the vines clustering around the 
pillars. It opened on a terrace from which there 
was immediate access to the free wild hills. 
Baithene, from his long residence there with 


234 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

Fabricius, was familiar with it all, at home with the 
place and the people ; his many acts of care and 
kindness had won for them both an enthusiastic 
welcome, which almost made the brother and sister 
feel as if they were amongst the men and women 
of their own clan ; they were understood, beloved, 
and honoured there, and free to do what they 
would, and go whither they would, without restraint. 

Baithene knew all the mountain paths, and it 
was their delight to climb crag after crag with feet 
nimble as the wild goat's, to gaze from the heights 
across fold after fold of the great range of the 
Apennines, or over the lower hills to the far-off 
plains and the sea. But most of all, Ethne's 
delight was in the fountains and streams, the 
springs bubbling up on the hill-sides, and pouring 
out their crystal waters from under the crags. 

‘‘ We have come once more from the aqueducts to 
the fountains," she said ; '' the waters are no more 
imprisoned and enslaved in rigid stone channels, 
they are free. And we are free," she added, ‘‘ free 
to go forth like them, and make the world glad, 
and to minister freely to its humblest needs." 

For they were indeed in a land of fountains and 
brooks, which run among valleys and hills ; the 
Aqua Marcia, and the Aqua Claudia, and the 
Fons Ceruleus of heavenly blue, the crystal springs 
which fed the waters of the great Claudian aqueduct, 
kept perennially full the magnificent fountains of 
Rome, and sparkled in Constantine’s porphyry 
basins in the great baptistery of the Lateran. 

Many a gracious kindness they found means 
and opportunities of doing to the peasantry, and 


ON THE SABINE HILLS. 


235 


the dill!, cowed expression on many of the faces 
was for them transfigured into a trusting smile of 
welcome. The heavy, universal shadow of slavery 
weighed indeed on all the toilers ; yet a hope 
dawned on Ethne of penetrating it with the light 
of Christian redemption and human brotherhood. 
Thus for the most part those happy days were for 
both of them a bathing of body, soul, and spirit in 
the fountain of youth, in the beauty and strength 
and freedom of nature. 

“ I was a glad and sunny child, 

And in the Fount of Life, 

Which, gushing from its hidden cave, 

In many a clear and sparkling wave. 

Each with sweet music rife, 

Wells in the morning sunlight up 
E’en to its stony brim. 

Dropping into each flowery cup 
That trembles on the rim ; 

Each joyous chime and merry burst, 

As fresh and glad as ’twere the first, 

I bathed and quenched my healthy thirst 
Until my heart grew wild. 

And in the still and sultry hours. 

When nature drooped and was sad. 

Weary with thirst and heat. 

The tread of my light feet. 

Was cool and musical, 

As when at evening fall 

Drop by drop in lonely pools the summer 
showers, 

And the desert looked up and was glad. 

I strove with the maddened storm, 

I leapt the crag with the water-fall ; 

For the blood in my veins was warm. 

And storms and streams and gleams and all 
The mighty creatures of the wild. 

In their wild, exulting play 
They welcomed me to their 'company. 

And they laughed to see a human child 
As strong and as glad as they.” 



CHAPTER XXII. 

A MEETING OF THE WATERS. 

T last the day of the nuptials came. 
Before dawn Ethne and Baithene 
started with the lectica and the 
cavalcade, and pausing once on the 
way, at last reached the great basilica of the 
Lateran. There the party from the'Aventine met 
them, and Marius himself wondered at the fresh 
power and beauty in Ethne's face, the radiant 
glow, the shining of the happy eyes. The sadness 
and the worn, weary look had indeed passed out 
of his own face, but still he felt as if the weight of 
the ages rested on him in comparison with her. 

‘‘ It is the old world wedding the new,"' he said 
to her with a tender gravity. 

“ I have been among the fountains,’’ she said ; 
“ we are going there together.” 

‘‘ You are my fountain of youth,” he answered ; 
‘‘ I need no other.” 

The Bishop and the priests met and received 
them at the porch, and they entered the great 
basilica ; it was crowded. Bishop Leo himself was 



A MEETING OF THE WATERS. 


237 


to give the benediction, and the rank of the be- 
trothed, the romance of the foreign, far-off origin 
of Ethne and Baithene, the story of their sorrows 
and their joys, had gathered a great company 
together, touched with a sympathy unusually real 
and deep. 

The white and purple veil was folded by the 
Bishop himself around the bride ; at the close of 
the ceremony he solemnly joined the hands of 
bride and bridegroom, laid his own hands on 
their heads, and then through the vast spaces of 
Constantine’s basilica, in his grave, deep tones 
sounded the benediction — O God, Who by Thy 
mighty power hast made all things out of nothing. 
Who, after other things set in order, didst appoint 
that out of man created in Thine own image and 
similitude woman should take her beginning, 
teaching that it should never be lawful to put 
asunder those whom Thou hadst pleased should be 
created out of one ! O God, Who hast consecrated 
the state of matrimony to such an excellent 
mystery (or sacrament), that in it Thou didst 
typify the sacrament (or mystery) of Christ and 
the Church ! O God, by Whom woman is joined to 
man, and so blessed a union was instituted at the 
beginning, as not to be destroyed even by the judg- 
ment of the Flood, look mercifully upon this Thy 
servant now to be joined in wedlock, who seeks to 
be defended by Thy protection. May there be on 
her the yoke of love and peace ; may she be a faithful 
and chaste wife in Christ, and may she continue a 
follower of holy women ; may she be lovable to her 
husband as Rachel, wise as Rebecca, long-lived and 


238 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


faithful as Sarah. May she strengthen her weakness 
by the help of discipline ; may she be modest, grave, 
bashful, and instructed in godly learning ; and may 
she see her sons’ sons to the third and fourth 
generation ; and may she reach the rest of the 
blessed in the Kingdom of Heaven.” 

As the last act of the ceremonial, the Bishop 
placed on the head of Ethne a golden crown, of 
Greek workmanship, and on that of Lucia a golden 
diadem, delicately wrought with fine Celtic art. 
Ethne would rather have chosen a crown of flowers, 
but the gold was considered an honour due to her 
birth, as for Lucia it was a token of the rank 
Baithene was able to offer her. 

And so with pomp and music the bridal company 
were conducted to the old palace on the Aventine. 
When they were alone together, Damaris blessed 
her son and Baithene according to the old Greek 
form of her people — “ The servant of the Lord is 
crowned for the sake of the handmaid of the 
Lord, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the 
Holy Ghost.” 

And afterwards to her daughter and Ethne she 
said — ‘‘ The handmaid of the Lord is crowned for 
the sake of the servant of the Lord.” Then 
embracing them with tears, she said the ancient 
words — ‘‘ With glory and honour didst Thou crown 
them, Thou hast placed a crown of precious stones 
upon their heads ; ” and she added in her own words 
with a radiant smile- — “ These golden crowns, 
beloved, will be offered in a few days on the altar 
in the church, but ye shall be a crown of joy to each 
other for ever.” 


A MEETING OF THE WATERS. 239 

Afterwards she gave a little sealed packet to 
Ethne. It contained a precious jewelled clasp of 
oriental workmanship from Miriam, with the words 
from the old Hebrew marriage ritual written in 
Latin folded round it — ‘‘ Make these two to rejoice 
with joy according to the joyousness which Thou 
gavest to the work of Thy hands in the Garden of 
Eden of old.'' 

Before long Ethne and Marius went away to the 
country house, now so dear and familiar to her, 
amongst the Sabine hills ; whilst Baithene and 
Lucia remained to be the son and daughter of 
Fabricius and Damaris in the old palace on the 
Aventine. 




CHAPTER XXIII. 

FULFILMENTS AND DREAMS ON THE SABINE 
HILLS. 

HUS Ethne went back to be the light 
and joy of the home among the moun- 
tains, which had grown so familiar to 
her ; but she came with a new light 
and a new joy. The gaiety and buoyancy of her 
race, and the free, imaginative delight in nature 
were still there, but there was added the tender 
grace of matronhood ; the old world and the new, 
the sunset and the dawn, had blended ; the weight 
of the cares of that old world of Marius were on 
her, as the power of her new hope was on him. 

“It is conjugiuinl^ they said, “no mere {con- 
tuherniuni) dwelling together, but workmg under 
a yoke together; His yoke which is fruitful. His 
burden which makes us run the swifter, as ' the 
burden of wings to a bird, or sails to a ship.' ” 

For always the burden of this universal slavery, 
which was crushing the Roman world, weighed on 
Ethne ; denying as it did the sanctity of married 
life to the toiling many, and making unholy life 



FULFILMENTS AND DREAMS. 24I 

SO terribly easy to the luxurious few ; degrading 
all, in fact, to one level of evil, because virtually 
rejecting the sacred equality of a common humanity. 
The Christian Church had indeed begun her long 
battle with this evil as with all others ; but to 
Ethne, coming from a social life of another kind, 
entangled no doubt with its own difficulties and 
wrongs, but not debased with these, it seemed as 
if the way made hitherto through all these centuries 
of Christianity was very little. 

“ It was written so long ago,’' she said, ‘‘ that 
tender letter of Paul the Apostle interceding for a 
runaway slave. Not even a good slave, but ‘ unpro- 
fitable.’ Yet the great Apostle calls him ‘My 
own son in the faith,’ and says to his master — 
‘ Receive him not as a slave, but a brother beloved.’ 
To the master, think, four hundred years ago ! 
And what master acknowledges this now 

“ Scarcely even our own Leo,” Marius said. 
“ Does not this perplex thee in Leo ? ” 

“ Why should it ? ” she said. “ Does not Leo 
himself say to God continually, ‘ We can do nothing- 
good without Thee ’ ? I suppose if he finds by and 
by that he has made a mistake, he will say in his 
humility, as he would say now if he saw it, ‘ I must 
have done that without Thee.’ Besides, beloved, it 
is not so easy, I know, for him or for you, or for 
any of us, even to ‘ think the thing that is rightful,’ 
much less to do it.” 

“What indeed can we do.?” he said. “To 
emancipate the slaves would be to doom them 
to starvation, unprotected, disorganized, helpless, 
degraded.” 

Q 


242 ATTILA AND IIIS CONQUERORS. 

'‘We must be Christian/’ she said, with her 
victorious smile, “and let the rest follow! We 
must love them, worship with them, believe in the 
image of God in them, however defaced ; in the 
brotherhood of Christ with them, however unrecog- 
nized. . He is sure to conquer in the end. And He 
is sure to give us our bit of His battle to fight.” 

One day of their wanderings together among the 
mountains remained stamped for ever on Ethne’s 
heart. The dusk was falling on the valleys, but on 
a crest of the mountains above them, a temple of 
the ancient gods (Marius believed of Apollo) shone 
golden in the evening light. A little company of 
mountain folk were moving slowly towards the 
portals, bearing a lamb garlanded for sacrifice. 
After a time they reappeared, and a strain of wild, 
weird music wound in and out, echoing among the 
hills. Heathen rites were indeed still practised 
there, and forbidden worship was still offered, which 
would not have been ventured on in less remote 
places. At the same time, below, on the other side, 
on the top of a low hill near them, Ethne saw a 
rude uncouth wooden cross, like a gibbet, standing 
alone, stretching out its arms ; a ghastly horror con- 
fronting the beautiful marble temple on the height. 

At the foot of that uncouth cross kneJt a. man, 
clothed in rough dark garments, with a sheepskin 
capote, such as was worn by the shepherds of the 
region. But as they drew nearer Ethne saw that 
his head was tonsured. His arms were clasped 
around the cross. Ethne and Marius stopped 
beside him and reverently bowed their heads. 
They felt in a sacred place. 


FULFILMENTS AND DREAMS. 243 

“ Patibiilum crucis, the gibbet of the cross ! ” 
Marius said in a low voice, quoting a well-known 
Ambrosian hymn. ‘‘ The legend in the country is, 
that this cross is the last left of a multitude on 
which the vanquished slaves of one of the terrible 
Servile Wars were crucified ages ago. The cross, 
you know, was a punishment only awarded to a 
slave.” 

Ethne’s whole face quivered, and tears streamed 
from her eyes. As they stood there speechless, the 
kneeling figure arose. Approaching them, and see- 
ing Ethne weeping, the stranger said, looking up at 
the cross, ‘‘ Lady, dost thou imderstand? ” 

She could not speak. She had indeed understood 
too keenly. Then a radiant joy shone from the 
stranger’s face, and looking up at the pagan temple 
glistening on the opposite height, with a slight 
accent which they recognized as Greek — 

“ 77/A wilLconquer thaty' said; and looking 
down on a fetter on one of his wrists, he added, 
‘‘ will conquer that and this. I also have been 
a slave.” 

“ No longer a slave,” she murmured, taking his 
hard, wrinkled, aged hand in hers, ^'a brother 
beloved ! ” 

‘‘Thou dost indeed understand!” he replied, in 
a tremulous voice. “ But how couldst thou have 
known } I also was a runaway slave. I was in 
one of the stateliest and most wicked households 
in Rome ; myself among the worst there, — only a 
child in years, but old in degradation and sin, — when 
one memorable day, at the games in the Coliseum, 
in the arena suddenly appeared that unknown 


244 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


monk from the Egyptian deserts, and tried to stop 
the combat, and was listened to for a moment, and 
then crushed to death beneath the shower of stones. 
But he saved Rome from that iniquity for ever, and 
he saved me ! The vision of that sacrifice of pity 
haunted me night and day, until I fled from that 
den of iniquity — fled hither to the Cross, to the 
Christ, for ever.” 

And without another word he left them, and 
vanished among the rocks. 

“ Was it an angel of God ? ” Ethne said, when he 
was gone. 

“An angel of God to us at all events, my 
beloved,” Marius replied, as they walked slowly 
homeward. 

Those were, moreover, to Ethne, months of much 
happy learning of many things. Still in many 
ways a child of the wilderness, it was a constant 
joy to her to learn through Marius the secrets of 
his ancient world. And above all, she delighted, 
with ever-increasing wonder and joy, in drinking 
with him of what to her, lover of all fountains, was 
the new and perennial fountain of “the Testaments 
of God.” 

“ Freedom, law, life : order, beauty, truth : every- 
thing is there,” she would say. “ My own people 
at home cannot indeed taste of all the riches of 
your learning. But they can have, they will have, 
through Patrick they /lave this, the best of all ! ” 

In another of these walks among the deepest 
recesses of the hills, they came on a little cluster of 
dwellings which had a different look from those 
around. Flocks of sheep were feeding high up on 


FULFILMENTS AND DREAMS. 


245 


the sweet mountain pastures, and a boy and girl 
were watching them. At the door of the farm 
buildings stood a young woman, with a fine expres- 
sive face and large dark eyes, and, beside her, 
her husband, an athletic, soldierly-looking man, 
apparently some years older than his wife. They 
greeted Ethne and Marius with a frank equal greet- 
ing, very different from the shrinking or sullen look 
common among the slave labourers. There was 
something in the young wife's face which greatly 
attracted Ethne, and seemed familiar to her in a 
way she could not account for. When they passed 
the farm she said to Marius — 

“ Those people seem more like our own upper 
clansmen at home than any others I have seen here. 
Who are they ? " 

‘‘ The man was a centurion," he replied. After 
one of the late Eastern wars, he left the army and 
retired here to his father's lands. His mother is 
said to be of Gothic birth, and his wife comes of 
some Eastern race. I believe his father was of 
ancient Sabine descent, as ancient as our own. 
Would to heaven there were more such ! I think 
then Rome need not fear the Goths ! " 

“ Are they Christians ? " Ethne asked. 

“ They are," he replied. “ Christians, it is said, 
from the days of Nero." 

Thus the months passed swiftly on in a deep 
calm flow of peace and love ; whilst meantime 
Baithene was devoting himself with single-hearted 
earnestness to learning everything of art or science, 
of handicraft or state-craft, of law or literature, that 
would be of use to his people. 


246 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


Before long a tragic echo from the world outside 
did indeed break in on this sunny calm. 

The year after the retreat of the Huns from Italy 
and rescued Rome, came the news how, at one more 
of his numerous nuptials, with a beautiful young 
maiden called Ildico (a name which seemed a 
suspicious echo of some Gothic word enfeebled by 
Latin lips), on the day after the wedding, after 
waiting until late in the afternoon, at last the 
attendants ventured in to see what their master 
might require, and found him stretched on his face 
on the bed, quite dead, the blood which had streamed 
from his face staining the ground below; while the 
bride sat weeping beside him, closely veiled, and 
speechless. 

No explanation was ever made as to how it 
happened : if by the hands of the young bride, no 
vengeance seems to have followed ; if as the result 
of the hard drinking at the wedding feast, this did 
not lessen the lamentations of his people. For 
them indeed all their long career of victory and 
plunder ended with the life of their chief. His 
Tartar horsemen wheeled with wild lamentations 
around his bier. He was buried in secret, and the 
captives and slaves who laid him beneath the earth 
were killed when their work was done, that none 
might ever violate his grave. No man knoweth of 
his tomb to this day ; and his empire crumbled 
into dust with its founder. 

The death of Attila did indeed remove a great 
weight of dread from the wretched Imperial court 
and from the falling Empire. It remained to be 
seen whether, after all, it would prove to have been 


Fulfilments and dreams. 247 

only the lifting off of a weight which had crushed 
the crumbling State for the moment into some 
semblance of consolidation. 

Soon after the tidings reached Marius and Ethne 
on their mountain heights, he missed her from his 
side, and found her kneeling in her chamber weep- 
ing bitterly. 

‘‘ I know the relief it is to Rome and the world,” 
she said. ‘‘ I did not want thee to see me in tears ; 
but I could not help weeping for that poor heathen 
king. If only he had met a few more Christians 
like Lupus and our Leo, who knows but the heart 
of the beast might have gone out of him, and he 
might have become a man again. For he was born 
a human babe of a human mother.” 

Marius said nothing, but drew her out among 
the hills and streams to soothe and comfort her. 
Their way that day lay by a road they did not 
often take, by the ruins of the magnificent villa of 
Nero, below the artificial lakes, into which he had 
gathered the waters from the hills. The lakes were 
still there, crystal clear from the fountains, heavenly 
blue under that Italian sky, or steeped in depths 
of varied colour from the reflections of the craggy 
steeps and wooded slopes around them. 

As they stood there Ethne said — 

‘‘If only we Christians had remained what the 
martyrdoms of Nero made us in that awful night 
at Rome, torches to illuminate the city and the 
world, how bright the city and the world would 
have been before this ! ” 

“In truth,” he replied, “it is not martyrdom we 
have to dread, but the deadly chill in our own 


248 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


hearts. And that/’ he added, ‘‘ every day and for 
ever thou keepest away from me. And by and by 
thou shalt take me to thy country, where the 
Christians are still early Christians, of the stamp of 
Nero’s Christians ; away to thy land of the foun- 
tains and the saints.” 

‘‘ Beloved,” she said, smiling, “ you also have 
your fountains ; and Ireland has not all or only 
saints.” 

Sweet human hopes came dawning on the two 
homes. The year of the death of Attila brought 
two little sons to the palace on the Aventine and 
the house among the Sabine hills. 

The joy was very great in both homes. If Ethne 
had been as a fountain of youth to Marius, these 
babes seemed to bring back youth to Damaris. 
She travelled backwards and forwards in a flutter 
of new possession and new hope from Rome to the 
mountains. North and south, the new world and 
the old seemed visibly blended in thos^ two 
precious blossoms of new human life. 

“The sunset has indeed met the dawn,” she said, 
“ and naturally the dawn has conquered, and there 
is a new day.” 

On one of Damaris’ first visits to Ethne the 
mother, Ethne said — 

“ Mother,” calling her thus for the first time, “ I 
have had a beautiful dream. I saw Nero’s villa, 
and the heathen temple, and the slave huts dissolve 
before my eyes. And, instead, a fair church shone 
on one of the mountains (Monte Cassino, I think 
Marius called it), the music of sweet psalms echoed 
among the hills, and happy peasants, instead of 


FULFILMENTS AND DREAMS. 


249 


taking sheep and lambs garlanded for sacrifice to 
the pagan temples, brought home their little 
children from the church, in white robes of baptism. 
And a holy man clad in white woollen robes met 
them from the church on the mountain. And I 
thought he was a man of your old Anician house.^ 
And from the church came troops of- white-robed 
men following them ; and from the lakes poured 
forth a great river plashing and dashing through 
valley and plain on to Rome, and on and on 
through the world, to our far West and everywhere ; 
and everywhere it brought with it freshness and 
gladness and life. What can that mean ? Must it 
not mean something very good for this darling and 
for the world ? ” 

Thou wilt bring thy little son to God, and God 
will surely make him a fountain of blessing to the 
world,” said Damaris, very tenderly. “ But we 
scarcely needed a dream to promise us that ! ” 

Then very earnestly Ethne added to Marius — 

“This child may be called Paul, may he not.^ 
Because of Paul’s conquering Nero, and because of 
his letter to the master about his slave.” Which 
request was solemnly promised to be fulfilled, and 
the mother forbidden to discourse any further for 
the time. 

Lucia, meantime, having in vain sought loyally 
for a Celtic name which Latin lips could pronounce, 
and which would not seem too barbarous for her 
little son, finally contented herself and every one 
with the name of Patrick, the Apostle of the Irish. 

^ St. Benedict was of the Anician house, and the first habit 
of the Benedictines was of white, or undyed, wool. 


2^0 


AtTILA AND IIIS CONQUERORS. 


And so, when the next Baptismal Festival came, 
at the Epiphany, the two babes were brought to 
the baptistery of Constantine at the Lateran. 

And there, in the water from the fountains on 
the Sabine hills (as Ethne liked to think), the Aqua 
Claudia and the Eons Ceruleus, the two little sons 
of Rome and Ireland were baptized by the great 
Bishop Leo, and sent forth on their journey of 
life, to be known thenceforth by the dear and 
consecrated names of Paul and Patrick. 




CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE LAND OF THE MORNING. 

OON after the baptism the longing of 
Ethne’s heart was granted. She and 
Marius, with Baithene and Lucia and 
the babes, set off on their long journey 
to the old Irish home. 

They started from Ostia, the port of Rome, from 
the quays on the Tiber (near the house where St. 
Monica had died), and coasted to Marseilles, where 
they landed. Thence they crossed the Visigothic 
kingdom to the mouth of the Loire, where they 
chartered an armed vessel for Ireland. Britain it 
was not possible to cross, torn as it then was by 
the successive irruptions from the north, Saxon, 
Jute, and Angle, which for the time made it 
heathen, but in the end, as we know, made it 
England. They touched at the cove (Perran 
Porth) on the western coast, still in the hands of 
the Britons, where Ethne and Baithene had listened 
to the epistle of Patrick and to the bell in the 
little church. 

To all of them that little bay was a shrine of 



2 52 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

sacred memories and a spring of inexhaustible 
hope. They brought the babes across the sandy 
cove into the little church, with offerings of gold 
and silver, and laid them in the arms of the priest 
for benediction. And then they set sail again 
across the Irish Channel. 

At the mouth of the river Boyne they drew the 
large flat-bottomed sea-galley up on the sands, 
and they made their way across the country to the 
house of the chieftain, the father of Ethne and 
Baithene. But for Dewi they would hardly have 
found it. The old chieftain and his wife could not 
endure the house on the cliff after it had been 
robbed of the treasures of their hearts by the 
pirates. For a time the very sight of the sCa was 
terrible to the mother’s heart, like the sight of a 
blood-stained dagger that had been plunged into 
the hearts of her children ; and they had gone to 
live on other lands belonging to the clan, near the 
river Blackwater. 

There Ethne and Baithene, with the babes, were 
welcomed home. That welcome brought a new 
revelation of what love and loyalty can mean 
to the hearts of Marius and Lucia. Every man 
and woman in the regions round rejoiced over 
them with great joy, as at the return of a son or 
daughter of their own ; and also of something 
unutterably more important than any son or 
daughter of theirs could ever be, born chief and 
lady, yet flesh of their flesh and bone of their bone, 
the glory of their clan, the pride of their hearts, for 
whom every drop of their own hearts’ blood was 
due, and would have been freely given. 


THE LAND OF THE MORNING. 


253 


Marius and Lucia, subjects of a corrupt court, 
whose Imperial families had often no past and 
therefore no future, to whom the throne was a 
mere front seat at a revel or a theatre, and the 
crown a mere decoration, felt here for the first time 
the overwhelming tide of the passion of loyalty. 
Citizens of a city which had no genuine common 
life of its own, which had flourished too long by 
draining out all the national and patriotic life in 
others, they learned for the first time what could 
be meant by the words Patria, Fatherland, Mother- 
tongue. Masters of a household of slaves, they 
had for the first time a glimpse of the honour there 
could be in loyal homage, to those who received 
and those who rendered it, of the faithfulness there 
could be in service based on kinship and affection. 
And simple as the dwelling was, with halls and 
chambers of clay and timber, to Marius and Lucia 
there was an inner grandeur in it higher than all 
the marble palaces of Ravenna or Rome. 

Sister,’’ he said to Lucia, when they were alone, 
“ your husband takes you out of a crumbling mass, 
of which you were simply the upper crust, and 
grafts you into a living tree, of which you and 
yours will be the fairest branch.” 

The chieftain and his wife stood at the door of 
the hall to welcome them. Their garments were 
homespun from the wool of their own flocks dyed 
in native dyes. But they stood there every inch 
royal in the grace of their reception of the 
strangers ; and also in every pulse mother and 
father as they pressed the son and daughter to their 
hearts, and took the babes tenderly in their arms. 


254 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


Afterwards Lucia said to Ethne — 

** I would have expected that thy father and 
mother and thy close kindred should be like thee, 
princely and simple, royally regarding the wants 
and claims of all, and with sympathetic discrimin- 
ation measuring the differences in place and 
character of each. But this charm goes through 
all your people ; there is not one clown, one 
obtrusive, awkward person amongst them. Every 
one is as respectful to you as if you were their 
queen, and as much at home with you as if you 
were their sister. How is it ? ” 

‘‘ I know not,'’ said Ethne, blushing at the tender 
compliment, ‘‘ unless it is that I a7n as a princess 
and a sister to them, and that we all belong to 
each other, as the stem to the flower and the flower 
to the fruit ; each content with its own place, and 
not wanting or deeming it possible to take the 
place of any one else.” 

‘‘ But that would be like the Kingdom of Heaven, 
my sister,” said Lucia. 

“ I suppose the Kingdom of Heaven ts the one 
Family of the Heavenly Father and the Divine 
King,” said Ethne meditatively; '‘and I suppose 
that is the ideal and the pattern of the clan. And 
^you will find it a help in striving to make it what it 
should be, to comprehend the highest it can mean. 
But, my sister,” she added^ sighing, “alas! I fear 
all chiefs and all clans are not what they should 
be, either to each other or among themselves.” ' 
For only that morning she had heard how one 
chieftain among Patrick’s converts. King Leogh- 
aire, had commanded his sons to bury him with 


THE LAND OF THE MORNING. 255 

his face turned towards his foes, on the ramparts 
of the hill of Tara — ‘'with his face turned south- 
wards towards the men of Leinster, as fighting 
with them, for he was the enemy of the men of 
Leinster all his life.’' 

Baithene had told Ethne and Marius this, on 
which Marius had mournfully observed — 

" Is this then also a land of divisions and crumb- 
lings ? Do the men of Leinster and the men of 
Ulster hate each other as the Huns hate the 
Romans and the Saxons the Britons ? ” 

And Ethne had replied — 

“ Beloved, I am afraid the whole world is a land 
of divisions and dissolvings. What Patrick has 
brought us is the one universal Church of the One 
Living God, as he told the princesses of our race 
at the well — ‘ Our God is the God of all nmil If 
our Ireland, if your Italy, can live in His life, we 
shall be oue and at peace, and strong. And this is 
what we in our little way, what Patrick and Leo in 
their great way, are labouring for night and day, 
heart and soul, every day and for ever.” 

It became Indeed clear to them all, that in 
Ireland and elsewhere the world is a battle-field, 
because the heart of every one in it is a battle- 
field. 

Not long after that, it is said, one of the greatest 
of the Irish saints was baptized with the double 
name of Wolf and Dove.^ 

“If only,” Marius said, “we could keep the 
Church from becoming a battle-field ! As yet, Ire- 


^ St. Columba. 


256 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


land seems to have no heretics — Manicheans, 
Arians, or Eutychians.” 

“ Only in the germ, at all events,’’ said Ethne. 

I suppose the germs of all the heresies and sins 
are everywhere.” 

But although they were too near the seat of 
judgment and the throne of rule not to see the 
dark as well as the bright side, Lucia and Marius 
felt they had come as to a sacred hearth, glowing 
with love and life, warm with the natural warm- 
heartedness of the race towards their own, and still 
more with the glow of first love in the hearts of 
Patrick’s Christians. 

It was near Easter when they arrived, the great 
season of the baptisms. Only three years before, 
Ethne and Baithene, with Ethne their mother, had 
been baptized among the first converts. And now 
well-nigh the whole clan — old and young, children 
and grey-haired men and women — gathered as 
catechumens around Patrick and his priests for 
instruction. It was a time of wonderful awakening 
and joy. Marius had seen Rome lit up for Easter, 
and at Ravenna darkness turned into day through 
the night of Easter Eve, by the gigantic candles 
and torches flaming along all the streets. But 
never did any illumination seem to him so festive 
as this in that far-off barbaric island, which the 
glory of the sunrise had so la:tely touched. 

The halls of Ethne’s home were lit up with 
torches ; every hut and cabin had its humble illu- 
mination ; and the hills flamed the good news to one 
another from summit to summit, the great Easter 
greeting, “ The Lord is risen y* He is rise^i indeed!"' 


THE LAND OF THE MORNING. 257 

And when the firelight melted into the dawn, 
the white-robed catechumens were awake and 
moving in festive processions from place to place, 
and all the land -was full of songs of joy — new 
songs. Patrick throughout his mission to Ireland 
from the beginning had aimed straight at the hearts 
of her people, at the consciences of her chiefs, at 
the hearts of her poets. 

Among his first converts was the chief poet, Dub- 
thach, the Laureate of the nation. And now new 
songs were pouring forth from their lips. Their 
harps were strung to the heavenly music, so that 
from the beginning, for Ireland, the harp became 
the symbol at once of patriotism and faith. 

From the first all that was best and noblest and 
wisest in the land — all the artistic skill, all the 
wisdom and knowledge Ireland had — were laid 
at the feet of Christ. Druids and bards became 
priests and singers of the Christian Church. Not 
as an iconoclast of all the beauty and wisdom 
already existing did Christianity win Ireland ; but 
consecrating all that was already wise, perfecting 
all that was already beautiful. As far as possible 
the existing organization was accepted. Bishops 
were the bishops, not of a territory, but of a clan, 
or kindred group of men. The old laws were not 
destroyed, but expanded and raised into the new. 
Patrick, though himself a Gallo-Roman, learnt 
in every sense the language of the people, 
the language of their hearts. There is scarcely 
another European nation that has, breathing 
through the first moments of its Christian life, a 
hymn in its own mother-tongue. But Patrick’s 


258 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


hymn was the Hymmis Scoticus, the Irish hymn in 
which every peasant mother could teach her little 
children “ the Practice of the Presence of God 
binding daily round them as a ^:onstant 'Morica’' 
or breastplate in the daily battle the invocation — 

“ Christ within us, 

Christ around us ; 

Christ beneath us, 

Christ above us,’' 

always and for ever. 

And, moreover, in every place where he came 
and founded a colony of Christians, Patrick left, 
if possible, a copy of the Gospels, or both '' the 
Testaments of God.” These were indeed in Latin, 
but then, necessarily, Latin was the key to the 
treasuries of all the ages. And Patrick in bringing 
Ireland into the kingdom of God brought her also 
into the inheritance of all the civilized past, lifting 
in a sacred ark above the floods of Danish bar- 
barism and Moslem fanaticism, so soon to sweep 
over the nations, not only the revelation of God, but 
the wisdom of Greece and Rome. 

Plfty years afterwards, the queenly Saint Brigit, 
then a babe in arms, had arisen, and (herself also 
a captive and a slave) had gathered men and 
women around her in thousands to the feet of 
Christ. Before that century had closed, the light 
and warmth of Christianity had penetrated into 
the remotest regions of the land, north and south, 
east and west ; to Donegal, Derry, Banchor, and 
Connaught. Before another century had closed, 
from the fountains of the Irish monasteries the 


THE LAND OF THE MORNING. 259 

living waters had poured forth through Scotland 
and England, Gaul, Switzerland, and Germany ; 
whilst to those fountains themselves, kings, nobles, 
men of letters from all parts, all who longed for 
fresher Christian life and deeper human learning, 
had come to drink. All this Marius could not 
know, but he felt the glow of the morning, felt 
that he had indeed found the Fountain of Youth. 
And all his life afterwards he would say to Ethne, 
when the days were darkest and the battle fiercest- — 
The sun is shining still in thy land, beloved ! 
We may be sure the battle is a victory there.’' 




CHAPTER XXV. 

CHAOS AND CREATION IN CHRISTENDOM. 

THNE and Marius needed indeed all 
the brightness of the memory of that 
dawn in Ireland to sustain them ; for 
the hour of parting had to come, and 
they were going back into a world of perplexity 
and peril. The mother and father and the people 
who loved Ethne so dearly had to be left. One of 
the clan was to go with Ethne, that the sound of 
her mother-tongue might not die away from her 
hearing, and that it might be learned by lisping 
lips in the home on the Aventine. The nurse 
who had thrown the plaid around the brother and 
sister on the night of the capture, had naturally 
taken little Paul to her inmost heart, and was to 
sail with them. And also Dewi the Welshman, 
who had grafted himself into the clan ; and Bran 
, the deer-hound. Meanwhile Lucia kept a Roman 
girl with her, that Latin also might grow up as a 
mother-tongue in her Irish home. 

And so at last Ethne and her husband departed ; 
and then for the first time the weight of exile and 



CHAOS AND CREATION IN CHRISTENDOM. 261 

separation pressed on her heart. As long as there 
was any one — father, mother, brother, clansman — to 
cheer and sustain, every thought that had a gleam 
of hope in it came to her heart and lips ; but 
when the ship went on her outward way, and the 
familiar shores were left behind, too possibly for 
ever, amidst the ^'perils by the way’' of every 
journey in those unquiet times, she discovered how 
her heart had always been instinctively turning 
thither where her steps might be no more. She 
felt how even their violent capture by the pirates 
had been no such wrench as this quiet departure 
by her own will. Then she had still belonged to 
the land she was leaving, and at every step away 
from it she had sustained herself and Baithene by 
the thought, that whichever way the road seemed 
to lead, it was really only a little way round back 
to the home. Everything, she had felt, was really 
working for the good of the fatherland ; every 
treasure of knowledge or good of any kind was in 
some way to be laid up in that familiar casket. 
And now it was not her steps only, it was her 
heart, her life, that was going forth to this great 
wide Europe, to this far-off new home. 

Marius was with her indeed, and her heart was 
in the truest sense his and their little Paul’s. But 
Paul also was to be a Roman, to live for Rome, 
for this southern world, not for Ireland. With an 
unconquerable instinct her heart at first turned for 
consolation to Fedelm, her old nurse, and to Bran 
the dog, who had insisted on coming with her. On 
the old nurse’s breast and on Bran’s shaggy head fell 
the tears, the only tears that brought any comfort. 


262 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

And Marius knew it and understood it all, and 
never felt a grain of distrust or displeasure, and 
never tormented her with consolations. It was 
not, however, until they reached Tours that he 
said a word to her to imply that he knew. She 
had crept out alone to the cathedral, to the tomb 
of St. Martin, where she and Baithene had con- 
versed with the old monk who knew the saint. 
The only words she could remember just then 
from their interview were the words of Martin 
which had baffled the devil, “ Let me see the print 
of the nails P 

“ The print of the nails,” she sobbed softly to 
herself, the print of the nails ! It has indeed to 
be also in us ! To follow Thee means this, not 
only carrying the Cross as a burden and singing as 
we go, but being transfixed to it, and not being 
able to sing at all, only to say softly — ‘Into Thy 
hands.’ ‘ The print of the nails! So let it be.” 

And as she turned away, comforted, she saw 
Marius watching her in the shadow of the font. 

“ My fountain of youth ! ” he murmured, tenderly. 

“ Ah, beloved,” she said, “ what freshness of youth 
or what water of life can there be in me } ” 

“ More than ever perhaps,” he said, “ when my 
fountain of youth has become a fountain of tears. 
The world is so full of tears, and the only tears to 
dread are those that cannot be shed.” 

“Yet after all,” ^she said, “the help is not in the 
tears, but in the life-blood from the print of the 
nails.” 

But after that she did not try to hide the 
tears from him. In every town where Ethne and 


CHAOS AND CREATION IN CHRISTENDOM. 263 

Baithene had found succour, it was the joy of 
Marius to leave rich offerings for the poor. At 
Tours they found out the old monk, St. Martin’s 
friend, and left their gifts with him, and laid their 
babe in his arms for his benediction. At Orleans, 
dear and sacred for so many reasons to them, they 
made their offerings at the tomb of Anianus (St. 
Aignan), the noble old Bishop who had so effectu- 
ally defended the city, and had gone to his reward 
and rest the year before. 

It was in Troyes that Ethne first began to rise 
again to her old hopefulness. For there they 
found the aged “Pope” and “Father,” Bishop 
Lupus, restored to his repentant children ; the 
whole city gathered again in honour and reverent 
love around the shepherd who had, as they found 
and acknowledged at last, been willing to lay down 
his life for the sheep. 

“ The people smote on their breasts and returned^ 
Ethne said ; and she was comforted, for the Church 
and the world ; for the multitudes, the toiling, sick, 
bewildered multitudes, straying and fainting, were 
always closest to that royal, motherly, Christ-like 
heart. Nor did they forget to visit the lowly tomb 
of the Deacon Nemorius, who was slain with the 
Book of the Gospels on his breast, before Lupus 
met and conquered Attila. Beside him lay other 
nameless martyrs similarly slain. And Ethne said — 

“ Perhaps the noblest, after all, are among these ; 
and glorious it is to think that these, the nameless 
on earth, are the numberless in heaven.” 

One night they paused on their way to Troyes 


264 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

at a village in a little island in the middle of the 
river Seine, to have a sight of the noble maiden 
Genofeva (St. Genevieve), and the place which was 
said to owe its salvation from the Huns to her 
courage and her prayers. She had been a disciple 
of Bishop Germanus of Auxerre. On one of his 
missions through Gaul she had come to him, desir- 
ing to consecrate her maiden life to Christ, and 
he had picked up a common coin from the ground 
as a token and badge for her to wear. Afterwards, 
when the Huns were hovering round the neighbour- 
hood, all the inhabitants would have fled and 
abandoned the place, but the maiden Genofeva 
exhorted them not to flee from the Huns into the 
homeless world, but to flee to God in their true 
home, the church. Night and day, she and the 
few who shared her faith stayed in the little church 
and prayed that God would help them. And the 
Huns did spare the place, and that little village 
grew to be Paris ; and the maiden's name was 
honoured on earth long after she had found her 
home with God for ever. 

When they went southward from Troyes they 
had a hospitable welcome from Marius’ old friend, 
Sidonius Apollinaris, soon about to relinquish his 
worldly dignities, and to devote himself to the 
arduous life of a Bishop of Auvergne. His gracious 
kindliness touched Ethne, and she was little dis- 
turbed by his antique pomp of words and elaborate 
little plays of decorative wit. They seemed to her 
the recreation of an old man, belonging to an old 
and fading world, and she had a tenderness for both 
which won his heart. He regarded her as a nymph 


CHAOS AND CREATION IN CHRISTENDOM. 265 

of the fountains, and she scarcely escaped being 
celebrated in an imitative classical panegyric. 

In the villa of the religious layman near Arles, 
to whom Marius had paid a visit years before, they 
stayed a night, and heard again of the venerated 
Metropolitan Hilary, and of the resentment felt 
against Leo of Rome for his severe treatment of 
him. This controversy Ethne was not advanced 
enough to understand, so that, when Marius turned 
uneasily to her for consolation and explanation 
about Leo, she only said — 

‘‘You know I cannot understand your politics 
in Church or Empire ; they are too difficult for 
me. My world is too young. It seems to me so 
much like the old disputes among the disciples 
which should be the greatest. We know Leo 
never wants to be greatest for himself. If he 
wants it for his city and his Church, I suppose it 
is because he thinks it best for all the rest. These 
tribes you call barbarian seem to change and 
migrate about so much, whilst your Rome seems to 
stay ; and in their languages there seem so many 
different dialects, it is difficult to know whether 
they are languages at all, or only words put 
together from many languages, as a means of 
communication between travellers meeting for a 
few days by the way ; whilst your Latin is always 
there, and always the same, and is the key to 
everything one wants to learn.’^ 

And Marius took comfort, and replied — 

“ I suppose, as Lucia said, we have to live our 
lives here and now^ and must build the best we 
can for our here and now. And Christ, Who 


266 


ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


never leaves His flock, will decide, as the ages go 
on, what part of the building is only ours, and has 
to pass away, and what is His to endure for 
ever/' 

But with Salvian, the venerable presbyter at 
Marseilles^ whom Marius had so reverenced of old, 
“ Magister Episcoporum," teacher of bishops, 
though never himself more than a presbyter, 
Ethne felt at home at once. His dark views of 
the Church and the- world did not at all depress 
her. 

‘‘ It is as good as living in the house or tent of 
the old chieftain Job," she said, “ to be here. Of 
course we know the world is not right, nor, it 
seems, even the Church here on earth. And yet it 
is better than being with Job, because the venerable 
Salvian knows the Gospels, and is always sure of 
the victory of good." 

“ He sees how the battle is lostl' Marius said, 
“ and that is a great part of the lesson how it is to 
be won. ‘ Our own vices are killing us,' Salvian 
says ; and there is always hope if we can learn 
that the fault is our own." 

They returned from Gaul by the eastern coast 
of Italy. Marius had a desire to show Ethne 
where the city of Aquileia had been. The Roman 
roads along the Adriatic, which had led to the 
ruined cities of Altinum, Concordia, and Aquileia, 
still remained, though the cities to which they led 
had vanished for ever, under the devastations of 
the Huns. They stood among the charred ruins 
of Aquileia by the clear stream of the Natiso ; and 
from the abandoned quays of the great commercial 


CHAOS AND CREATION IN CHRISTENDOM. 267 

port they chartered a vessel from Ravenna to take 
them thither by the coast. As they sailed along 
the low shores, they saw a few poor huts on a 
cluster of islands, with shallow channels between, 
peopled by fugitives from the ruined cities. They 
knew not that this cluster of huts would grow into 
Venice, any more than they could foresee the fiery 
flood of Moslem invasion from Arabia which 
Venice was to help to stem. But as they landed 
and spent a few hours among the refugees in those 
huts, and listened to their tales of wrong and ruin, 
and saw their brave battle of resistance with the 
seas and sands, Ethne, always in sympathy with 
suffering and toil, felt there a breath of life and 
hope which she missed afterwards amidst the 
empty pomp of Imperial Ravenna. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

“THE HOLD OF EVERY FOUL SPIRIT,” “l SIT A 
QUEEN.” 

T was in the glow of an autumn evening 
that Ethne and Marius, with their 
little Paul, the Irish nurse, Dewi and 
the dog, reached the Aventine, in the 
autumn of the year of our Lord 454. 

The welcome of Damaris and Fabricius, especi- 
ally the mother's wistful welcome, with an instinc- 
tive longing look for some one yet to come who 
was not there, brought to Ethne's heart again the 
warmth of familiar affection and the sense of home. 
If Damaris had seemed satisfied, as if all were 
restored by her own return with Marius, Ethne's 
own heart would have been less satisfied. It was 
the mother s first eager question, “ And Lucia, my 
daughter, my child ? ” that altogether woke up her 
heart to life. Her own mothers heart, Ethne 
knew, was always asking that question about her- 
self, and in filling as far as possible a daughter's 
place to Damaris, she felt as if in some way 



‘THE HOLD OF EVERY FOUL SPIRIT.’ 269 

strengthening Lucia to sustain her own mother 
in Ireland. 

One day before long she met Miriam, straying 
sadly into the Temple of Peace. 

“ You wonder to see a Hebrew woman in this 
Temple of the Idol,’’ she said ; “but I came to see 
once more the sacred treasures of our race, and of 
the Temple of our God, the golden table of the 
shewbread, the seven-branched candlestick, that 
once lit up our Holy Place.” 

“Your Holiest Place was dark and empty, was it 
not, all the year ? ” asked Ethne ; and then very 
tenderly she added, “ But I believe if you and I 
could look into the Holy of Holies now in the 
heavens, we should see it not dark or empty ; for 
One of your race has entered there and abides 
there always.” 

“Ah, lady! ah, my child!” said Miriam, 
passionately, “ pray thou for the husband of my 
youth, if thou canst indeed pray to One Who sees 
and hears ; pray for him, that the glamour and 
enchantment may pass away. The clutch of 
Mammon is around him closer and closer, crush- 
ing out his heart, his life, entwined so fearfully 
with what is dearest and best, his love for our 
child. He seems only to care for one thing besides 
— these sacred relics of our ancient glory. He also 
steals in here from time to time, and I have seen 
the tears on his wrinkled old face, making it look 
for the moment young again, as if the old days and 
the old life might come back yet.” 

The family stayed all that winter on the Aven- 
tine, and more and more Ethne’s heart was drawn 


2/0 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

to Fabricius and Damaris, with a deep and tender 
reverence for the old age which seemed creeping 
on them too soon, as if the dissolution and decay 
of the falling world around them were gathering 
them into its shadow. 

For this corrupt city, this Rome, over which 
Augustine had mourned, after the siege of Alaric, 
forty years before, as the fallen Babylon, had fallen 
deeper than ever, had indeed become “ a habitation 
of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean 
bird, with her merchandise of bodies and souls of 
men.'' Again and again ‘‘ her sins had reached 
unto heaven," and God had remembered her 
iniquities ; but she, as her faithful Leo had told 
her again and again, remembered not her sins, nor 
her chastenings, nor her deliverances, but still 
said in her heart, ‘‘ I sit a Queen, and shall see 
no sorrow." 

Even as they had entered the streets on their 
return from Ireland, full of the din of wild revelry, 
Ethne's nurse had said — “ Is this the city which 
has been plundered and burnt so often, which we 
heard was saved so lately from destruction by the 
prayers of the great Bishop ? " And Ethne could 
only say, “ God did save the city once more 
through Leo — once more ! " knowing what depths 
of misery and iniquity lay seething underneath all 
this foam and noise. 

The Imperial court had for a time transferred 
itself from Ravenna to the Palatine, and seemed to 
have grown more wicked than ever, with the base 
wickedness of weakness, deeming itself emanci- 
pated from fear. Attila, the dread of Europe, 


‘THE HOLD OF EVERY FOUL SPIRIT.’ 27 1 

Roman and Gothic, Imperial and barbarian, was 
dead. The Huns were scattered into a helpless 
herd of disconnected tribes. Ercan, Attila’s dar- 
ling boy, was tranquilly and meekly reigning over 
a little portion of his father’s conquests, under the 
protection of the Eastern Empire, in the country 
around the mouth of the Danube. There was 
nothing more to fear from the Huns. It was true 
that their ancient allies, the Vandals, who had 
slaughtered more Romans than any other of the 
barbarians, had taken possession of the province 
of North Africa. But the Vandals would, it was 
hoped, be content with Africa ; and although they 
were becoming skilful seamen, with great fleets 
like Carthage of old, and although they had a 
powerful king, Genseric, of a most savage temper, 
who might, some thought, prove another Hannibal 
to Rome, Africa was across the sea and a long 
way off, and the worst evil inflicted on Rome at 
present by the Vandal conquests, was the loss of 
the great granary of her hungry population. 

It was also true that the Vandals were Arians, 
and hated the Romans, not merely as Romans, but 
as Catholics. The stories of persecution from 
Vandal Africa were very fearful ; , but the stories 
of the iniquities of Roman Carthage before the 
Vandals captured it had been more fearful still. 

Augustine had died twenty-five years before, at 
besieged Hippo, repeating the penitential psalms 
and weeping for his people, yet saying — “ Righteous 
art Thou, O Lord, and Thy judgment is just.” 

Augustine’s Hippo had fallen, Carthage had fallen, 
and had been sacked by the Vandals, experts, it 


2/2 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

was said, in plundering beyond all the barbarians ; 
and with the greed of plunder was blended the 
cruelty of persecution. Nobles and ladies of gentle 
birth were sold in the slave-market ; priests were 
slain in the churches as they read the Gospels and 
celebrated the Eucharist. Tortures unutterable 
were inflicted on the obstinate. And all the time 
the piratical raids were drawing nearer and nearer 
to Rome ; yet Valentinian and his court went on 
revelling in careless indifference, disregarding every 
tie of honour and justice, betraying hospitality, 
dishonouring the noblest blood, rewarding with 
treachery the most faithful service. The great 
General Aetius was there at the court, his son 
betrothed to the Emperor’s daughter ; but the 
Emperor had begun to feel Aetius no longer 
necessary, and his doom was sealed. 

At length the story of crime reached its climax. 
The Emperor invited the great general who had 
saved his empire into his palace ; and then, pro- 
fessing to be indignant with him at urging too 
vehemently his son’s suit for his Imperial bride, 
suddenly plunged his sword into the heart of his 
guest and deliverer ; the only occasion, it was 
bitterly said, on which he had the courage to use 
a sword. The wretched courtiers followed his 
example ; Aetius fell, pierced and mangled with 
many wounds. His friends were then allured into 
the palace, and murdered in cold blood one by one. 
The courtly Sidonius Apollinaris was startled 
from his smooth Latinity into the vigour of old 
Roman speech by his indignation at this crime, 
and called the miserable Emperor a “ crazy half- 


‘THE HOLD OF EVERY FOUL SPIRIT.* 2/3 

man/* scarcely possessing an individual name, a 
mere appanage to his mother Placidia. Aetium 
Placidus mactavit semivir amens. And it was 
reported that when, immediately after the murder, 
the Imperial murderer, probably doubting the 
prudence of his act, asked one of his courtiers if 
it was a good deed, he was answered with an 
epigram which made its author famous — “ Whether 
it was a good deed, most noble Emperor, or some- 
thing quite other than a good deed, I am scarcely 
able to say. One thing, however, I do know, 
that you have cut off your right hand with your 
left!** 

The feeble Emperor had not long to wait to 
prove whether his crime was a political success. 
Christmas came once more to Rome, with its 
message of peace ; Epiphany, the manifestation of 
Christ to the Gentiles, with its boundless revelation 
of love, its boundless promise of redemption ; and 
Leo*s noble voice rang through the great Christian 
basilica its trumpet-peals of victory, of warning, of 
summons to holy life, its sentences of just judgment 
on the unjust. And in March that sentence fell on 
Valentinian. He was riding out of the city to the 
Campus Martius, and halting amongst some laurel 
bushes in a pleasant grove, surrounded by his 
court and his guards, watching the games of the 
athletes, when suddenly two soldiers of the guard 
(whose names Optila and Traustila have a Gothic 
flavour) rushed upon him and stabbed him to death ; 
and beside him also the minister Chrysaphius, who 
with him had planned the death of Aetius. No 
other blood was shed. In all that servile court, in 

s 


274 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

all that dissolute city, no hand was raised to avenge 
the death of the Imperial murderer. 

After that events rushed rapidly after each 
other, as at the close of some sensational melo- 
drama. Petronius Maximus of the great Anician 
house was elected Emperor in place of Valentinian. 
The placid, virtuous senator, a man of the latest 
culture, who regulated his days by his clypsedra, 
or water-clock, whose exceptionally magnificent 
and exceptionally respectable festivities were the 
admiration of respectable Rome, was installed in 
the Imperial palace. His own wife had died — 
many said broken-hearted — from the wrongs of 
Valentinian ; and there were suspicions that 
Petronius Maximus was an accomplice in the 
murder of his wife’s betrayer. Whether from the 
doting affection of an old man, or the base ven- 
geance of an injured man on an innocent woman, 
Petronius Maximus, very shortly after the Emperor’s 
death, insisted on the beautiful widowed Empress 
Eudoxia becoming his wife. Eudoxia, a niece of 
the great Emperor Theodosius, had loved her 
worthless husband in spite of his crimes, and 
naturally detested Petronius Maximus. In the 
madness of her humiliation and revenge, she sent 
an appeal to Genseric to come with his Vandals 
and deliver her by attacking Rome. 

Genseric’s pirate fleet was always ready for any 
expedition of plunder, most ready for the most 
profitable, most of all ready to combine vengeance 
and gain in the plunder of the queen-city of the 
world, the metropolitan see of Catholic Christendom. 

It was soon rumoured that his ships were on 


‘THE HOLD OF EVERY FOUL SPIRIT.’ 275 

their way across the Mediterranean. But Petronius 
Maximus sat helpless in his palace beside the 
Imperial wife who detested him. He could think 
of no remedy but to issue the Imperial proclama- 
tion — ‘‘ The Emperor grants to all who desire it 
liberty to depart from the city.’’ 

Fabricius, unable to defend his family, sent 
Damaris and Ethne with the child and an escort 
of faithful slaves to the villa among the Sabine 
hills, whilst he and Marius resolutely remained, to 
be of what service they could to Rome. 

Ethne and Damaris were alone together in the 
familiar rooms of the quiet home among the 
streams of the wooded hills, when the tidings of 
the tragic end of Maximus reached them. When 
it was quite sure that the Vandals were on the sea, 
on their way to Rome, the citizens went mad with 
terror and despair, and seized on the wretched 
old enthroned official, as the nearest object on 
which to wreak their rage. He had perhaps been 
harsh as well as weak ; to be just requires courage 
as well as good-nature. But whatever he had been, 
it was through him, as the cause of the appeal of 
the Empress, insulted by her unwilling nuptials, 
that the Vandals were coming. The nobles, and 
all who could take refuge in flight, fled. The 
panic was universal. The cause of it, a feeble 
doting old man, was at hand. The soldiers 
mutinied, the rabble rose, the slaves of the Imperial 
household, probably clinging to the young Empress 
of the ancient Imperial house, whose vices had only 
made the more revelry for them, and detesting 
the intruder, whose respectable virtues brought 


2/6 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


them no profit, abandoned the old man to the 
rioters. The smooth, orderly life ended in a 
ghastly tragedy. The Imperial household tore 
him limb from limb, dragged the fragments of the 
mangled body through the city, and then threw 
them into the Tiber, that no reparation of Christian 
rites of burial might be his. And the messenger 
who brought the terrible tidings to Damaris and 
Ethne added — “ And the Vandals are here ; their 
ships have been seen in the offing close to the 
port of Ostia.’’ 




CHAPTER XXVII. 

LEO AND THE VANDALS. 

OR three days no news from Rome 
reached the villa on the Sabine hills. 
To Damaris and Ethne they were days 
of solitude spent in prayer for their 
beloved and for Rome. They prayed the Our 
Father,” the great prayer of Christendom, over and 
over, engraving the unfathomable meanings of its 
simplicity deeper and deeper into their hearts. 
And ‘‘after that manner they prayed always,” 
every petition pervaded by the “Our Father.” And 
so the childlike asking for the daily bread and daily 
forgiveness became possible and real ; the solitude 
of the prayer to “ My Father Who seeth in secret^' 
ordained in the Divine ritual, expanded into Our 
Father’s all-embracing heaven, into the boundless- 
ness of the One Family, into the 02ir of the most 
solitary Christian prayer. Also, they prayed the 
collects of Leo, humble, grand, and simple, the 
“ Grant us the spirit to think and do always such 
things as be rightful the prayer to the Pilot of 
the Church and of each faithful soul, sure to be at 



278 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 


the helm through every storm — “ Grant that the 
course of this world may be so peacefully ordered 
by Thy governance, that Thy Church may serve 
Thee in all godly quietness/’ 

These especially for this earth, and then looking 
beyond to the results in heaven — “ Almighty and 
merciful God, of whose only gift it comeththat Thy 
faithful people do unto Thee true and laudable 
service, grant, we beseech Thee, that we may so 
faithfully serve Thee in this life, that we fail not 
finally to attain Thy heavenly promises, through 
the merits of Jesus Christ our Lord/’ 

And perhaps oftenest of all they offered up that 
prayer of Leo’s which, intertwining commands and 
promises, unfolds the depths of both command and 
promise for earth and heaven — Almighty and 
everlasting God, give unto us the increase of faith, 
hope, and charity ; and that we may obtain that 
which Thou dost promise, make us to love that 
which Thou dost command.” 

Thus, often resting their hearts on the staff of 
Leo’s faithful words, the two women lived through 
those days of terrible suspense. And on the 
fourth came the good tidings, that once more, as 
far as possible, Leo had saved Rome. The 
messenger told how the peaceful procession of the 
clergy, the great Bishop leading them, had gone 
forth from the gates of the defenceless city, along 
the Ostian Way, and had met the Vandal king. 

Less merciful than the Huns, Genseric had yet 
been moved as never before by that stately, saintly 
presence, and although he would not relinquish the 
plunder of the city, he gave orders to his soldiers 


LEO AND THE VANDALS. 279 

that there should be no torture of the captives, no 
slaughter of the unresisting, nor any setting of the 
buildings on fire. 

Marius and Fabricius were still determined that 
they must not leave as long as they had any 
chance of helping the miserable, plundered citizens, 
or were able in any way to mediate, counsel, or 
sustain. 

Ethne could scarcely wish them to do otherwise, 
and the anguish of suspense had to be borne. 
It was reported that the nobles were to be taken 
captive, and sold into slavery in Africa ; and 
who could say that Marius and Fabricius would 
escape ? 

A necessity for fresh air and movement came 
over Ethne ; child of the hills and woods, for her 
the companionship of the mountains and the 
streams was as that of familiar friends. At first 
she hesitated to leave Damaris alone, until per- 
suaded by her entreaties. 

'' Go forth, my daughter,” she said, ‘‘ among the 
hills and brooks ; thine eyes are always opened 
to see the well-springs, as thou liftest up the 
thirsting.’' 

And Ethne went, usually accompanied by the 
two people of her own race in the household. 
Nurse Fedelm and Dewi, and by the great deer- 
hound. The first day she sought and found no 
companionship save the streams and the rivers, 
rushing down the crags ; the very sound of the 
water seemed to refresh her like a draught from 
the cup of life. But the next day she ventured to 
the ruins of Nero’s villa, to the place whence they 


28o ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

had seen the pagan temple crowning the heights 
and the rude cross of torture planted on the little 
hill. 

It was evening again, as when she went there 
before with her husband. The temple shone 
golden in the evening glow, and the cross was 
reddened with the rays of the dying sun. Ethne 
was half hoping to see the hermit again once 
more, when to her delight she perceived the 
kneeling form in the d^rk robe with the sheep- 
skin capote, the arms clasped around the cross. 
She went forward and knelt beside him, whilst 
Fedelm and Dewi stood at some distance behind. 
After a time the hermit rose. His face lit up as 
he recognized Ethne. 

‘‘But where is thy husband, my daughter.^'' he 
asked. 

“In Rome, father ! ” she said. 

“But they say those savages, the Arian Vandals, 
are plundering and sacking Rome, my child, and 
that the city lies a defenceless prey in their 
hands.” 

“ He stays because Rome is defenceless. Pray 
for him ! ” she implored. 

“I will pray for him night and day,” was the 
reply. 

“You are a priest .?” she said. 

“A deacon and servant of Christ and His 
Christians, as far as may be,” he replied. “ Bishop 
Leo wrote to the Bishops of Campagna, that the 
priesthood should not be degraded by the ordina- 
tion of slaves, and I, as thou knowest, was a slave 
and a fugitive.” 


LEO AND THE VANDALS. 


281 


‘‘Bishop Leo has once more saved Rome/^ 
Ethne said, “as far as Rome can be saved.'’ 

“I know,” the hermit said; “I pray for the 
Bishop constantly, often in his own words. It is 
not because he despises the slave, but because he 
honours the ministry of the Lord, that he refuses 
a slave the priesthood. For, alas ! often slavery 
does degrade the slave unutterably ; and also,” he 
added, in a low, deep voice, “the master.” 

“Our Master took the form of a slave,” she said, 
“and He knows the heart of a slave. I also, 
father, was once a captive and in bondage. I 
think nothing teaches like suffering ; and that 
kind of suffering I suppose Leo does not know.” 

The hermit was silent a few moments, and then 
once more, as on that other evening, looking up 
at the rude weather-beaten cross, he said, with 
tears in his eyes — 

“ Lady, thou hast understood^ Then, seeing her 
worn, wearied look, he added, “Wilt thou come 
with thy people into my cave } I have bread and 
raisins, if thou wilt deign to partake of them ; the 
peasants around are good to me and bring me 
food ; and close beside is a spring of pure water.” 

She went with him. An abundant fountain 
gushed out of the rock just outside the cave, 
afterwards plashing in a waterfall over the rocks. 

“ It is one of the springs which feed the Aqua 
Claudia,” he said. 

She smiled. 

“Then it has baptized my little Paul,” she said. 
“Thou hast sent forth thy contribution to the 
sacred font of the Lateran.” 


282 ATTTLA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

Thou hast a little Paul ? ’’ he asked. 

“Yes,” she said, “a little Paul, who is, I trust, 
to tread in the steps of the great Paul, who wrote 
the letter about the fugitive slave, ‘his own son in 
the faith, his brother beloved.’ ” 

His voice quivered as he replied — 

“ I shall pray every evening and morning for 
that little Paul.” 

“ As we pray night and morning for the slaves,” 
she said, “ that they may be gathered into the 
Church as brothers beloved by Christ and by us.” 

Then he told her that his cave was supposed to 
be a haunted cave. 

“ The peasants think it is the oracle of a faun,” 
he said, “one of their old forest gods. And still 
sometimes they come to consult the old deities 
here. They seek to know the future, if perchance 
there is any escape for them out of their miseries, 
which are many. They think they are seeking the 
old dethroned gods whom their fathers worshipped, 
in what they think were happier times. But their 
poor hearts are really thirsting, not for the dead 
heroes, but for the living God ; not for the un- 
human fauns, but for the human Saviour. And 
often they will listen to me when I speak to them 
of the Christ Who died and is not dead. And I 
tell them His w’ords, ‘ Come unto Me, all that are 
weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.’ 
And they, being often wearied sore, and overladen, 
come, and coming, they find rest, for they find 
Him.” 

“ I also came here to-day weary and heavy-laden,” 
she said, “ and I go away comforted and at rest” 


LEO AND THE VANDALS. 283 

Thou hast not only come to Him, my daughter,” 
he said, “but thou hast taken His yoke upon thee, 
which is ' not my will but Thine !' His yoke,” he 
added, “ is not indeed always easy, but it is always 
good. It is the yoke of the plough which shall 
make thy fields fruitful ; the yoke of the water- 
carrier who brings refreshment wherever he goes. 
His burdens are jaot always light, as we understand 
lightness ; but they are burdens which do not 
hinder, but help. They make the feet ‘swifter,* 
not slower, on His ways.” 

He spoke with a Greek accent that reminded 
her of Damaris. 

“Thou, like myself, art not of this land,” she 
said. 

“ I was from Athens,** he replied. “ My mother- 
tongue was the language in which the great Paul 
wrote.*’ 

“ Thou speakest the words of the gospels as in a 
mother-tongue,** she said. “ From thy lips they 
seem to drop into my heart fresh from the fountain, 
with no aqueduct between.” 

And as she rose to go away, he said — 

“ I shall pray constantly for thy little Paul, and 
for thy husband, and for thee.” 

When she returned, Damaris rejoiced at the 
light in her face. 

“Thou hast been among thy fountains!** she 
said with a smile. 

“ I have been among thy fountains,” Ethne 
replied. “ I have had water given me to drink from 
the fountain of thy mother-tongue.” 

Another day Ethne resolved to visit once more 


284 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

the farm among the hills, where she had seen the 
ruddy, happy children, the free, frank, soldierly 
man with the graceful, dark-eyed young wife, 
whose face seemed to her familiar, as a strain of 
music heard long ago. She found the young 
mother drawing water with a pitcher from the 
well near the house, her children laughing around 
her, and helping her to pour the water into a 
trough for the sheep which were clustering near. 
Her dark eyes brightened in kindly recognition, 
and all at once the likeness in her face flashed 
upon Ethne. 

‘‘ Rachel ! ” she exclaimed, “ Rachel at the well ! ” 
Rachel is my name,” the stranger said; “but 
how couldst thou know me ? ” 

“ I did not know thee,” Ethne said, “ but I knew 
thy mother, Miriam, the wife of Eleazar 

The young mother laid her pitcher on the brim 
of the well, and knelt down by its side, and clasping 
her hands in adoration, she looked up to heaven. 

“ God of our fathers — Father of our Christ,” she 
said, “ Thou hast heard me at last.” 

“ He has heard thee all the time,” said Ethne, 
“ thee, and thy father and mother, who have sought 
thee from land to land, and prayed for thee day 
and night.” 

“ Where are they ? ” Rachel asked. 

“ Alas ! they are in wretched, captive, plundered 
Rome,” Ethne said ; “but pray on. The God of 
thy fathers, the Father of thy Christ and ours, is 
hearing still.” 

Rachel insisted on Ethne’s coming into the 
cottage with the nurse and Dewi and the dog, and 


LEO AND THE VANDALS. 


285 


nothing could satisfy her till they had all partaken 
of her goat’s-milk cheeses, and the flat, Oriental 
loaves which she baked on the wood fire. 

As they were eating, the soldierly husband came 
in from the fields, and then alktheir story unfolded 
itself. 

There had been a rising gf the people in the city 
in Asia Minor where Rachel was born, in con- 
sequence of some wild calumny about the massacre 
of a Christian child, and a Roman force had come 
to restore order. All the Jews in the place had 
been banished, and some of them had been sold into 
captivity. Among the captives, Rachel, then a 
child of twelve, had fallen to the share of a Roman 
centurion, a brave, simple man, whose mother was 
of Gothic race. 

‘‘He had compassion on me,” Rachel said ; “ he 
is the gentlest and bravest of men. He had a 
little sister about my age. He brought me 
home to his father’s house and lands among 
these hills. They were Christians, and welcomed 
me as one of the people of their Christ, and I also 
became a Christian, and was baptized. In a few 
years I became the wife of their son, my deliverer.” 

Then Ethne told her all she knew of Miriam and 
Eleazar ; and with the promise that Rachel would 
come to see her in her own home, she returned to 
Damaris and her little Paul. 




CHAPTER XXVIII. 

A TREASURE LOST AND A SOUL FOUND. 

JOYFUL meeting awaited Ethne on 
her return. Marius himself came to 
greet her, with their little Paul in his 
arms. 

Fabricius and Damaris were sitting together in 
the corridor. 

After the first rapture of re-union was over, 
Ethne’s eyes, always quick to perceive any suffer- 
ing creature, caught sight of the crouching figure 
of an aged man, propped up against one of the 
pillars of the house, and of a woman bending over 
him. 

In another moment she recognized that the 
poor, feeble, bent form was that of Eleazar, with 
his wife beside him. She went to them at once. 
Miriam looked up into her face with anguish in 
her eyes ; but in Eleazar s face there was no sign 
of recognition. On his wrists were the scars and 
cuts of tightly-strained cords. He looked at Ethne 
with a piteous appeal, but no comprehension. 

“ Ail gone 1 ” he kept muttering to himself ; “ all 1 



A TREASURE LOST AND A SOUL FOUND. 287 

all ! All the treasure ! all the treasure I had 
heaped up for my Rachel ! All the treasure the 
Almighty had preserved so long for my people, 
and caused the Gentiles to preserve. The golden 
table, the golden seven-branched candlestick of the 
Temple, all are gone ! We are forsaken ! We are 
trampled into the dust for ever ! There is none to 
care and none to save ! 

Fabricius and Marius had but just arrived with 
the helpless old man. After a time they led him 
gently away into a chamber apart with his wife, 
laid him on a couch, set fruit and bread before 
them, and left them alone. 

Ethne did not yet venture to tell them of Rachel. 
She saw that the old man could not bear any fresh 
shock, even a shock of joy ; and besides, she felt 
she must first see Miriam alone and give her the 
tidings. 

When she came back into the corridor, she and 
Damaris listened to the story of the terrible fort- 
night of the separation. For fourteen days the 
luxurious city had been given up to the plunder of 
the most practised and cruel plunderers in the 
world ; Rome had been abandoned to her bitterest 
enemies. 

The palaces, many of them like cities in them- 
selves, each with its amphitheatre, its stadium, its 
baths, its garrison of slaves, had been rifled of 
every treasure they contained. Gold, gems, rich 
silks, costly furniture and raiment, embroideries, 
tapestries, carpets from every land under the sun ; 
priceless sculptures and paintings, bronzes, marbles, 
jewelled cups and urns, choice graven work in 


288 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

brass and copper, everything was gone. The 
temples of the old gods were emptied at last. 
The statues were taken from all the ancient shrines, 
and the Temple of Peace was robbed of the sacred 
plunder found in the Temple of Jerusalem, and 
sculptured in bas-relief on the Arch of Titus. The 
pagan statues and the Jewish sacred treasures were 
placed in two of the Vandal ships, which had 
different fates. The sacred things of the Jewish 
temple reached Carthage in safety, but the ship 
which was laden with the old Roman gods and 
goddesses foundered and sank, and thus for cen- 
turies the beautiful old statues have been lying 
under the blue waves of the Mediterranean. 

But far worse than this, the Vandal fleet had 
borne away into slavery hundreds of the noblest in 
Rome — men and matrons, youths and maidens. 

‘‘ How did you escape ? ” Ethne and Damaris 
asked. 

“ We scarcely know,*' Marius said, unless it was 
because you were praying, and we were needed here.’' 

“But they said Leo had saved Rome for the 
second time,” Ethne said. “ How can it be said 
that Rome is saved ? ” 

“ Rome is still there , Marius replied mournfully, 
remembering vanished Aquileia, “despoiled in- 
deed, but not destroyed ; still a home of the living, 
still a city, not a heap of ashes and a charnel-house 
of the dead. And this she owes to Leo. As to 
us, our lives at least are saved ; and if life is still 
worth anything to him, we have saved the poor old 
Jew and his noble wife. For he is poor, without 
pretence, at last, and she is noble.” 


A TREASURE LOST AND A SOUL FOUND. 289 

“ How did you save him ? and what from ? 
Ethne asked. 

His precious hoard was all but his death,’* 
Marius replied; “those ferrets of Vandals wrung 
out of him where it was hidden. I found him 
hung up by the wrists in his own upper chamber, 
the ropes cutting through to his poor old bones ; 
they were. threatening other tortures, and his wife 
was kneeling vainly imploring them to have pity 
on his grey hairs. At that moment, hearing cries 
of distress, I happened to come in, and I reminded 
the brigands of the promise made by their king 
Genseric to Leo, not to torture their captives or 
to slaughter the unresisting. ‘ But this old fellow 
is not unresisting,* they said ; Gie refuses to show 
us the hoards we know he has here, close at 
hand.* ‘What hoards can a hunted, persecuted 
old exile like me have.^^* moaned the Jew. The 
Vandals laughed, and strained the cords tighter. 
The old man writhed, but would not give any 
information as to the coveted hoard. If it had 
been a sacred trust he was defending he would 
have been a hero ; if a religious faith, a martyr. 

“Then Miriam, unable to bear any longer seeing 
him thus tortured, whispered to me, and pointed 
to a corner of the room, where the hoard had been 
built in. The old man*s eyes flashed fire, and he 
denied what she said ; but the plunderers knocked 
at the wall, found that it rang hollow, broke into 
it, and greeted the shower of gold and silver that 
rattled down on the floor with peals of mocking 
laughter. Again I reminded them of the promise 
of mercy to Leo. The chief agreed. 


290 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

“‘All fair, the secret is out,* he said. ‘We have 
the treasure, and that is torture enough for the old 
miser.* And at his command they cut the cords 
and let the victim down. 

“ He fell in a helpless heap on the floor, all 
hope and courage crushed out of him, and wept 
and sobbed like a child. If it had been wife and 
child for whom he had suffered any one must have 
wept with him.** 

“ It was wife and child and country to him,** 
Ethne murmured; “it was the double glamour 
which bewildered him — the hideous curse of Mam- 
mon and the fond dream of affection. But what 
of Miriam .J*** 

“ She knelt down beside him,** Marius said, “ the 
noble Jewish woman. She threw her arms around 
him and sustained him ; she took his poor wounded 
hands and held them to her heart ; she sobbed 
out every tender name she could ; I understood 
them by the tones, though the words were in their 
own Hebrew. There was tender reverence in her 
every gesture, even more than affection ; and turning 
to me, she said, in a tone almost of triumph, ‘ It is 
not himself, it is his deadliest enemy they have 
slain. And now he will be himself again.* And 
she added, ‘ Thy wife will understand ! * ** 

“ I do understand,** Ethne said, with a victorious 
radiance like a halo on her face ; “ and I have found 
him his true gold ! I have found his child ! The 
idol is broken, but the dream of love shall prove 
true.** 

The next morning she crept quietly into the 
chamber where they had left Eleazar and Miriam. 


A TREASURE LOST AND A SOUL FOUND. 29! 

The old man had fallen at last into a heavy sleep. 
Miriam was sitting on the floor beside him, holding 
one of his hands. Ethne sat down beside her, and 
for some minutes said nothing. 

'‘The evil spirit has gone out of him,” Miriam 
said. “You see, he sleeps as sweetly as a child.” 

“And the lost child is coming to him,” Ethne 
answered. “ Coming to you both, mother and* 
father! Your Rachel is found.” 

Miriam started as if she had seen a spirit, fixing 
her dark eyes with passionate intensity on the 
sweet grey eyes of Ethne. Her whole frame 
quivered. 

“ Lady ! child 1 ” she said. “ To thee, I know, it 
would be impossible to lie, even in the fond hope 
of binding up a broken heart. You would always 
know that nothing but truth could heal the wounded 
spirit, or bind up the broken heart. Nothing but 
the love which is true — nothing but God.” 

“Nothing but God, Who is Truth and Love,” 
Ethne said, with her infectious smile ; “ Who has 
heard thy prayers and seen thy tears all through 
these weary years ; Who gave thee compassion 
which made thee good as an angel to me. He 
has led me to thy child.” 

And then she told Miriam the story of Rachel. 

As early as possible on the morrow Ethne and 
Marius went to the farm on the mountains, and 
there they found Rachel amongst her children ; 
the dark-eyed boys, and one fair, golden-haired 
baby girl. Father, mother, and children at once 
came down the hills to the villa of Fabricius. 
There, by many tokens, the mother recognized her 


292 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

child, whilst by an instinctive sympathy their 
hearts drew together. 

When Eleazar awoke, the little group around 
him, Rachel and her sons, and the golden-haired 
babe on Miriam the grandmothers knee, were 
beside him. 

‘‘Who are these ” he said, starting up, with 
^eyes wide open and bewildered, yet with a dawning 
consciousness in them, like one waking out of a 
dream. 

“ It is only thy Rachel, our Rachel, and her 
children,’' Miriam said, in tender, quiet tones, 
caressing the little one on her knee. “Thou hast 
always known they would come, and now, see, they 
are here ! ” 

“Is it Paradise.'^” he said. “Are we in the 
garden of God } " 

“ Nay, beloved," Miriam replied, very quietly, 
“ except as every true marriage brings us back to 
Eden." 

Then he began gradually to return to full, quiet 
consciousness, and rising on the couch, he said — 

“ My Rachel ! And all the dowry, all the 
treasure I had saved for thee is gone." Then 
burying his face in his hands, the old man wept, 
quiet, natural tears. 

B.ut his daughter knelt beside him, and gently 
drawing down his hands, laid her babe in his arms. 

“Father," she said, “see, the God of our fathers 
has given us the gift and inheritance that cometh 
of the Lord." 

And her husband, standing behind her, laid his 
hand on her head and said — 


A TREASURE LOST AND A SOUL FOUND. 293 

“See, here is thy hid treasure. Truly thou hast 
given the best jewel in the world to me.’' 

“ What to us were gold and silver ? ” Rachel 
pleaded. “ God has given us the babes, and also 
the old riches of our race, the riches of Abraham 
our father. We are rich in flocks and herds. 
Wilt thou not come and see 

And the old man laid his trembling hands on her 
head, and said — 

“ The Lord hath taken away, and the Lord hath 
given ; blessed be the name of the Lord." 




CHAPTER XXIX. 

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS. 



ISTORY is a great perpetrator of ana- 
chronisms. She is 

“ ddbordante, frendtique, 
Inconvenante ; ici le nain, Ik le geant, 

Tout k la fois.” 


But 


“ II faut bien toldrer quelques excds de verve 
Chez un si grand poete.” ^ 


All ages in one; all types tossed together 
mele ; repetitions, contradictions, violent contrasts, 
inexplicable inconsistencies no novelist would have 
dared to invent. 

Even in our little group among the Sabine hills, 
how many races, periods, types were thrown 
together! In Fabricius, not a lifeless fossil, but a 
living survival of the grand old Rome of law and 
order and self-sacrificing patriotism, the traces of 
which had made it possible for the corrupt new 
Rome to linger on so long. In Daman's, not the 


^ Victor Hugo on Creation and Providence, Encore Dieu^ 
Eart (THre grandplre. 


ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS. 295 

painted artificial Hellenism of her present sur- 
roundings, but a genuine afterglow of the noble, 
simple beauty of early Greece, beauty as natural 
and inevitable as the beauty of the lines and curves 
of flowers and waves. In Miriam, the fervent, 
adoring, exulting, thirsting love for the God of the 
fathers of the old Hebrew Psalmists ; the bound- 
less, helpful pity for men of the old Hebrew 
prophets. In Eleazar, the old exclusive, passionate 
patriotism of his people, which in the isolation of 
exile had so long only seemed to survive in that 
passion for possession which the old prophets 
had so continually detected and so unsparingly 
denounced ; and now that this icy spell was broken, 
the old passion of patriotism had revived in the 
passionate love of the family, always recognized 
by the Law and the Prophets as the sacred 
core of national life, the sacred shrine of what 
was most heart-stirring in the national Ritual. 
In the Greek hermit of the cave, a survival of 
the early Greek Church of the Roman catacombs ; 
and also an outpost of the great army of monks 
and solitaries, which was to conquer the wilder- 
nesses, material and moral, of Western Christendom. 
In Marius, sunset melting into dawn through his 
Ethne ; his weariness of the faded classicism of an 
imitative culture, and the unreality of subtle 
debates about a faith which had no bearing on 
practice, vanishing in the freshness of her new 
heavenly life ; all that was true and beautiful in 
the fading old world living anew for him in the 
morning dew of her new day. 

Soon after the Vandals had sailed off for Africa, 


29^ ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

Fabricius and Marius went again to Rome to look 
after the desolated palace on the Aventine. The 
walls were still there, but little else. 

The Vandals, said to be the greatest experts 
at plunder among the barbarians, had done their 
work effectually. Traces of barbaric feasts were 
strewn about the deserted rooms ; fragments of 
familiar household treasures, cherished from child- 
hood, were scattered over the broken mosaic 
pavements as mere refuse of useless and abandoned 
plunder ; the frescoed walls were stained and 
scarred. In the gardens the thickets of roses were 
trampled and crushed, the trellised vines torn down 
and broken. There was a sense of outrage and 
desecration over all, which for the time made the 
dear familiar things and places terrible and weird 
and ghastly. They had to say to themselves again 
and again — ‘'These trampled flowers, and prostrate 
vines, and despoiled halls and chambers do not 
feel their dishonour. And ere long for us also the 
vulgar associations scrawled over them will be 
obliterated, and the earlier characters will re- 
appear.’^ 

And Marius said — 

“Ethne would see through it all at once. Being 
a creature of the light, naturally she always looks 
through to the light, and therefore can always 
read all the palimpsests, and see through to all 
the original sacred texts, in Attila, in old Eleazar, 
or in our Rome.” 

Fabricius made some worldly lamentations over 
the destruction of property for his children. 

“ I thought to have endowed thee and thy 


ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS. 297 

children richly,” he said, ‘‘as becomes our ancient 
house. But between the Vandals and the Huns, 
and our own tax-gatherers, the beggary of the 
citizens, and the robberies of the slaves, there 
will, I fear, be little left for thee and thine to 
inherit.” 

“We inherit Marius said; “thee and all 

thou art, our mother and all she is. And what 
inheritance can be worth that to us } What do 
rich men often leave to their heirs, but the in- 
heritance not of their gold but of their avarice, 
the inheritance of a paralyzed hand unable to use 
or to give, but only to close on what it has ; the 
curse of an insatiable hunger for more; the spell 
of a heap of gold which they have- to toil to heap 
up higher, enchanted into beasts of burden or 
mere blind earthworms ? ” 

“And yet,” said Fabricius, ‘'they say the earth- 
worms help to build and shape the world. But, 
however that may be, it is a good thing to see the 
spell reversed, as in Eleazar the Jew, transformed 
back from an earthv/orm into a man ; the gold 
gone, the enchantment broken, and the man 
himself again. God keep us from all such en- 
chantments.” 

“ It seems,” said Marius, “ that in these days of 
sieges and sacks there is a good chance of the spells 
being broken. Perhaps if days of prosperity and 
peace ever come again, they may bring back baser 
idols and more unconquerable spells.” 

When they returned to the Sabine hills they 
found all in full festival : the corridors of the villa 
festooned and garlanded with flowers and fruits, 


298 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

the labourers on the estate and the children of 
the mountain farm gathered for the joy of harvest ; 
Eleazar, like one of the patriarchs of his race, with 
the '‘heritage and gift’’ of Rachel and her children 
clustered round him, Miriam with the last babe on 
her knee, Damaris guiding the first baby-steps of 
little Paul, Rachel in her stately Oriental beauty, 
Ethne fair and radiant as morning serving every 
one. 

While the children pelted or garlanded each 
other with the lavish wealth of roses, and filled 
the place with the music of their laughter, Fabricius 
drew near Eleazar, and the old men sat down 
together. 

"The world is sad enough,” Fabricius said, "for 
thy people and for mine; but the children are 
glad ! ” 

And a soft voice near murmured — 

" Their angels always behold the face of God.” 

" The God of our fathers gave us homes before 
He gave us a Temple and a priesthood,” Eleazar 
said meditatively. " Perhaps He is leading us back 
to these earliest temples, where the father is the 
priest and the children are the singers.” 

" I have just heard a story which reads like a 
parable,” P'abricius replied. " The ancient treasures 
of your Jerusalem and of our Rome have fallen 
alike into the hands of the Vandals ; but their 
fate has been quite opposite. Yours have been 
borne safely to another shore ; but ours lie lost 
for ever in the depths of the sea.” 

Ethne was standing near, and she knelt down 
and laid her gentle touch on the hand of Fabricius. 


/ 


ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS. 299 

‘‘Father/’ she said, “shall a^iything really good 
perish and be lost for ever in the depths of any 
sea } Does not your old Rome live on in her 
great laws, and in our own Leo ? Are not all the 
real treasures carried on and translated into their 
true use and meaning in the Kingdom of our 
Christ.?’’ 

And Damaris, with little Paul in her arms, 
added — 

“ Surely all the true treasures of all the temples' 
shall be saved, to be understood and used better 
by the babes who shall succeed us here ; and,” 
she concluded in a lower voice, “to be carried 
safely across the sea to the other shore, whither 
we are going, to the land of the living, to the City 
which hath the foundations.” 

The families of the Anician villa and the free- 
hold farm on the mountains, the ancient inheritance 
of its possessors, dating back ‘with a pedigree 
beyond the beginnings of Rome, were much linked 
together. 

Through Miriam and Eleazar, Rachel and her 
children, the first Testament of God came to 
Ethne and her children, as a great national literature 
and history. Abraham in his tents with his flocks 
and herds; David, shepherd, hero, and king; Job, 
the great chieftain, who saw the dark side of the 
world and ventured to bewail it to God, and was 
not rejected by Him, but accepted and honoured ; 
Moses, loving his rebellious people more than 
himself, and leading them through sea and desert ; 
Daniel in the lions’ den ; the Three Children who 
chose the fire rather than falsehood, and walked 


300 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

through the fire unharmed beside One like the Son 
of God ; — all these were living persons of a living 
story to Ethne’s children. Dear, moreover, to 
Ethne with an intimate affection, besides these 
earthly friends, were the heavenly friends of the 
toiling and the suffering — the angel who came to 
the forsaken slave-woman, and called her by name, 
and led her back to her dying child, that God 
might open her eyes to see the “w^ell,” and the 
child might live ; the angel who came to the 
despairing prophet, and brought him the little 
cake, when less sympathetic mortals might have 
inflicted on him a sermon on despondency. To 
her the voices of the old Hebrew prophets also, 
with the magnificent daring of their denunci- 
ations of oppression and wrong, came as fresh and 
inspiring as if she had heard them in the palaces 
on the Palatine but yesterday, or anywhere in the 
streets of Orleans and Troyes. 

It was much thus to learn those unrivalled 
old human stories, those unique old Divine 
messages, not packed up in a lesson-book, nor 
crumbled down into texts, nor beaten thin into 
allegories, but real and fresh as the stories of 
Patrick or of Leo, — whilst always shining through 
and through with the Divine light, which those 
who most frankly recognize the human medium 
feel most vividly. 

Delightful also it was to her beyond words, to 
see the light of the fulfilment of the New Testa- 
ment of God, of the Christ, slowly penetrating into 
the soul of Eleazar, as it had into the heart of 
Miriam long before. 


ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS. 


301 


The New Testament, the Gospels, the Acts of 
the Apostles, epistolary treatises, familiar letters, 
came to Ethne s children from the lips of Damans 
in the language of Paul and John, in living speech 
as familiar to Damaris as the words of Shakespeare 
and the great Elizabethans to us. 

‘^Thy Jerome’s Vulgate is as good and grand 
as our Claudian aqueduct,” Ethne would say to 
Damaris ; “but thy Greek is as the Eons Ceruleus, 
the Aqua Claudia, the fountains bursting fresh 
from the depths of these hills.” 

It was the last lingering sound of living Greek 
(the first language of the early Church) in the 
Western world. F.or centuries afterwards the living 
waters flowed to Western Christendom through 
Jerome’s aqueduct. The great Leo did not 
write or speak Greek. 

Many a time also Ethne found the old Greek 
hermit in his cave, near Monte Cassino, and laid 
her little Paul in his arms for his blessing. Once 
she told him of her dream after the birth of the 
child — of the church crowning the mountains in 
place of the temple of the old gods ; of the company 
of mountain-folk, instead of leading the lambs 
garlanded for sacrifice, bringing their children for 
baptism ; of the white-robed band pouring forth 
thence hither and thither throughout the mountains, 
throughout the world, like streams making the 
land fair and green wherever their footsteps came, 
like angels bringing to men the glad tidings of 
great joy. And the old man as he embraced 
the child said — 

“And may this thy babe, lady, be one of 


302 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

those thy white-robed angels and messengers of 
peace.” 

One bright Sunday it happened that, as long 
before Lucia had discovered Ethne diving deep 
into the old Hebrew poem of Job, Marius found 
her greatly absorbed in a fresh manuscript. She 
was in ecstasies of delight. 

‘‘You never told me of this,” she said. “This 
is a book of the Prophets of the New Testament 
of God. I shall never need to dream any more, 
for here is a Divine dream, a Vision of God ! 
The disciple beloved of the Lord was in the Spirit 
on this His Lord's Day ; saw Him ; saw the 
riddle of this earth and its solution ; saw heaven 
open from within ; saw also the earth as it is, and 
was no more satisfied with it than the chieftain 
of old ; saw how it is a battle-field to the end. 
But he also saw what the old chieftain could 
not see — that the victory is sure, has been won for 
ever, is being won day by day. Through all the 
din and wailing and tumult he heard the Hallelujahs 
of those in heaven who see the meaning and the end ; 
felt the soft flow of the living fountains through all 
the blood and fire and smoke. On earth he saw the 
multitudes struggling, toiling, enslaved, oppressed, 
hungering and thirsting, and sick as of old in 
Galilee. In heaven he saw another great multi- 
tude innumerable, white-robed, with palms in 
their hands, yet longing and interceding for those 
who battle and suffer below. On earth, storm and 
battle to the end ; but heaven shining through the 
rifts in the clouds all through to the end. And at 
last not only a ‘ multitude,' but the City, the City 


ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS. 


303 


which hath the foundations coming down out of 
heaven from God. Earth also right at last ! — not 
only the hunger and thirst, but the sins, the 
wrongs, and the curse and death itself gone for 
ever; His servants serving Him for ever. His 
name shining in their foreheads , — His name^ which 
that beloved disciple always tells us is love, the 
Lamb slain for love, the King conquering through 
love. You see there is no need to dream any 
more ! All we could dream of, beautiful, and 
good, and holy, is unveiled here, and infinitely 
more than we could dream. The beloved disciple 
saw it — saw it for us all.” 

Before long another little son was given to 
Marius and Ethne, and she said — 

“ His name must be called John, after that 
beloved one who saw. I need no dream for him. 
We have the Divine dream and its interpretation, 
the riddle and the solution, the Book of the 
unveiling. We will go into the thick of the battle, 
thou and I and our children. We must not 
grudge them their share of the glorious wounds, 
or the hard victories. We must go back to the 
poor, plundered, wrecked city, to our Rome, for 
victory is sure if we endure to the end.” 

At Whitsuntide the family returned to the plun- 
dered palace on the Aventine. The pain at the 
despoiling of the palace was swallowed up in the 
threefold joy that Whitsuntide brought. In Con- 
stantine's baptistery, by the Church of St. John 
Lateran, in the porphyry font filled from the 
fountains on the Sabine hills, Ethne’s second son 
was baptized by the name of the beloved disciple, 


304 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

the great Apostle of love, the Divine of the battles 
and the fountains. 

And with this little John were received into the 
Church of Christ an aged man and woman of the 
race of which He was born — Miriam and Eleazar. 

As in this great Whitsuntide baptism the large 
company of the newly-baptized were gathered 
together in their white baptismal robes, with the 
chrism on their foreheads, the voice of Leo rang 
through the silence in the vast spaces of the 
great basilica, and penetrated every heart, as he 
proclaimed — 

This day’s solemnity, beloved, is to be accounted 
among our foremost festivals. For as to the 
Hebrew people of old, fifty days after the immo- 
lation of the paschal lamb, the law was given from 
Mount Sinai ; so after the Passion of Christ, 
whereby the true Lamb of God was slain, on the 
fiftieth day after His Resurrection, the Holy Spirit 
descended on the Apostles, and on the people of 
the faithful, so that the diligent Christian may 
recognize how the preparation {initio) of the Old 
Testament ministered to the beginnings {principiis) 
of the New, and the second was founded by the 
same Spirit who instituted the first.” 

As the great Bishop spake these words, Ethne’s 
heart turned sympathetically to her Hebrew friends. 
And then came a bit especially for her own 
Ireland. 

^'Oh, how swift,” Leo said, ‘Gs the speech of 
wisdom ! And when God is the Teacher, how 
quickly what is taught is learned I The Spirit of 
Truth bloweth where He listeth. The peculiar 


ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS. 305 

(j)ropri(B) voices of every nation are made one 
common tongue in the mouth of the Church. 
From this day the trumpet of evangelic preaching 
has pealed forth. From this day showers of gifts 
and rivers of blessing have watered every desert. 
The Spirit of God has been on the waters, renew- 
ing the face of the earth ; and on the departing 
darkness flashes the new dawn, sparkling in the 
many colours of the various tongues, indwelling in 
each heart as a fiery force to consume sin, to create 
intelligent perception, to illumine every faculty. 
Let us with one heart incite one another to the 
veneration of this Holy Spirit, by Whom the whole 
Catholic Church is sanctified, by Whom every soul 
is imbued with reason. Who is the Inspirer of faith, 
the Teacher of science, the Fount of love, the Seal 
of chastity, the cause of all virtue. From Him is 
the calling on the Father, from Him are the tears 
of penitents, from Him the groans of suppliants ; 
and ‘none can call Jesus Lord except by Him.’ 
For the Spirit of Truth Himself makes the house 
of His glory shine with the splendour of His own 
light, and in His temple He will suffer nothing 
dark nor anything lukewarm.” 

It was always Ethne’s delight to bring Eleazar 
and Miriam to everything that linked the old with 
the new. She rejoiced therefore when, at the 
Festival of the Seven Maccabaean martyrs, Leo did 
honour to that noble mother of their race, the 
mother of the seven Maccabaean martyr brothers. 

“Blessed mother! blessed progeny!” he said. 
“ The palms of these seven martyrs are multiplied 
sevenfold — the first suffering without the help of 

u 


3o6 attila and his conquerors. 


an example ; the last tortured in all the tortures of 
the others ; whilst each conquers in all, all have 
won the sevenfold crown of each.’' 

And then — “ The battle indeed,” he said, never 
ceases for the Christian. Thou who dreamest that 
the days of persecution are past, that for thee there 
is no combat with the enemy, search into the re- 
cesses of thine own heart, and see if no tyrant seeks 
to rule in the citadel there. Make thou no truce 
with avarice; despise thou the increase of unjust 
gain ; refuse thou any compact with pride ; chase 
away enervating luxury ; repel thou injustice ; con- 
tend with falsehood. And when thou findest thy 
combats multiplied, do thou also, a follower of 
these martyrs, seek with them a multiplied victory. 
We die to sin when sins die in us ; and men become 
dead to the world, not by the perishing of the 
senses, but by the death of vices. Let each of you 
be mindful that the Temple of God is founded in 
Himself.” 

Thus day by day and year by year Ethne and 
Marius, and all that little company of the Aven- 
tine, sought to keep their post in the great battle, 
contending in Rome against her tyrannies and 
miseries and sins, and making the plundered palace 
rich and beautiful again by gathering thither the 
orphans, the cripples, and the aged left destitute 
and forsaken by the sack of the Vandals ; whilst 
among the Sabine hills they sought to bring free- 
dom of soul to the slave, and the light of Christ to 
the lingering paganism of the peasants. 

And all the time they were upheld by the holy 
example, and inspired by the trumpet-calls of Leo, 


ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS. 307 

rebuking the careless, encouraging the desponding, 
reviving the faint, enkindling the foremost to press 
on further. 

Old Rome lived on, they felt, in Leo. His far- 
seeing eye reached from end to end of Christen- 
dom. His strong hand held the dissolving world 
and the distracted Church together. 

His great life-battle was indeed drawing to a 
close. Underneath the vague Pantheisms from 
the East, brought into the West, into Rome and 
Spain, through Manicheans and Priscillians, he had 
detected the corruption of moral life, the relaxing 
of all the ties of duty and loyalty, and had fought 
against them to the death, not indeed gently 
either in word or deed. 

Through the subtle speculations of Greek thought 
he had felt the entangling embrace of a parasite, 
eating out the life of Christianity, and had kept 
and unfolded for the Church the great primitive 
faith in the Divine and human Christ. Around 
him was a broken, bewildered Christendom ; on 
the shores of Africa, a Church with magnificent 
traditions of martyrs and fathers, Perpetua, Felici- 
tas, Cyprian, Augustine, long torn to pieces by 
schisms, now lying helpless under the tyranny of 
the Arian Vandals, ready to become the prey of 
the Moslem invasion so soon to come and crush 
both Catholic and Arian under one weight of death. 
In the East, heresies innumerable, originating in 
the subtle thinkers of Alexandria and Antioch, 
fought out by the fierce monks of the desert ; 
Syria, Greece, Egypt, Carthage biting and devour- 
ing one another until the common enemy came 


3o8 attila and his conquerors. 


and destroyed them all. Spain was in the hands 
of Arians ; Gaul torn between contending races and 
beliefs ; Britain had relapsed into heathenism. The 
one thing needful at the moment seemed to be 
Unity, and for this unity Leo sacrificed, strove, and 
toiled. And his own soul being a city at unity 
within itself, with primitive simplicity of character, 
Roman strength of will, Christian singleness of 
heart, this unity he succeeded in preserving through 
that distracted age. But always with him unity 
was a means and not an end, the essential condition 
of life, valued for the sake of the life it guarded ; 
and always he worked with the sense that he, a 
mortal man, was working under an Immortal King 
for an immortal kingdom ; always with the sense 
that he, the successor of Peter,'' could do nothing 
but by standing on the rock of Peter’s confession, 
always translating the old Roman order and law, the 
old simple apostolic confession of Christ, into the 
languages of the new world. 

So the great Bishop battled on, until at last, six 
years after he had saved the city for the second 
time by his mediation with the Vandals, the 
faithful voice was silenced on earth for ever. 

It was in the corridor of the villa on the Sabine 
hills that Marius brought home the news of the 
death of Leo. He had just gained one more victory 
for the faith, over the subtle heresies of the East. 
“ The glory of the day is everywhere arisen," he 
wrote, “the Divine Mystery, the Incarnation, is 
restored to the age. It is the world's second 
Festival since the Advent of the Lord." 

The battle for him was over. The great com- 


ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS. 


309 


mander could say at last his “Nunc Dimittis/’ 
“ Let me depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen 
Thy salvation.’' 

And he had been “ liberated in peace.” 

“ No more shall we hear his clear strong words 
of hope and love,” Marius said. “ No more in any 
new peril that may come on her will Rome have 
Leo to save her by throwing himself into the 
chasm.” 

A hush of awe and tender gratitude fell on them 
all. Fabricius said — 

“ The last of the great Romans has departed.” 

And Damaris — 

“ The latest of the great saints has entered into 
life.” 

As always, death completed life. And they first 
saw the noble life in its true meanings and pro- 
portions in the silent sculpture of death. They 
felt he was indeed Leo the Great ; and only at the 
altar, as Monica had said to Augustine, could be 
his highest commemoration : “ With the angels and 
archangels and all the company of heaven ” render- 
ing thanks for all he had done, and been, and 
become. 

When they returned to the Aventine from the 
solemn obsequies of the Shepherd and Father of 
Rome, Marius said to Ethne — 

“Thou hast never been perplexed by anything 
that seemed doubtful in the great Bishop’s life ; 
not about his contest with Hilary of Arles, nor 
even about his forbidding the ordination of slaves.” 

“ Why should I } ” she said ; “ Leo never claimed 
to be anything in himself. Has he not taught us 


310 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

all to say day by day in our prayers, that ^ we can 
do nothing good without God ' ? Has he not taught 
us never to be satisfied with ourselves, but always 
to pray on and on continually for ‘ the increase of 
faith and hope and charity Has he not taught 
us that the ‘ world is ordered by the governance,’ 
not of emperors or generals, or the greatest in the 
world, or the holiest in the Church, but ‘ by God ’ ? 
Has he not taught us that the destiny and mission of 
the Catholic Church, from the lowest to the highest, 
is not to rule, but to ‘ serve Him in all godly 
quietness ’ ? ” 

Many think he is building up a new tyranny,” 
Marius said, ‘‘ in the kingdom of God.” 

And Ethne replied, with her far-away look as 
of second sight — 

“ As far as what Leo builds is only Rome, will it 
not perish like the other Rome ? As far as it is 
chiefly Peter’s, did not the blessed Peter himself 
sink beneath the waves, only to be saved by the 
outstretched hand of Peter’s Lord ? But as far as 
it is Christ’s kingdom and Peter’s rock, which is 
Christ, it cannot fail to stand. We make aqueducts ; 
God only opens the fountains. We build our little 
houses of clay, which if the life dies out of them 
become prisons or tombs ; the living God creates 
living worlds. We make empires ; God gives us 
a little child. His Eternal Son, the manger and the 
cross. Did not Leo tell us that ‘ Peier is saying 
still every day throughout the Catholic Church, 
“ Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God'' ’ ? 
And is not our Leo also saying that for ever now, 
here below, and above ? ” 


ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS. 3II 

‘‘To thee and such as thee indeed he is!’’ 
Marius said. 

“And you know we have always our twin 
fountains,” she added, “ our Aqua Claudia and our 
Fons Ceruleus, ‘the Testaments of God.’ We 
have our one Book, our two literatures, never dead, 
always spoken to us by the living voice ; ‘ breathed 
into us,’ as Leo told us, ‘by the living Spirit.’” 

And so the days and years passed on. And the 
children grew into youth, and the aged passed into 
the new youth above. 

The first to pass away from them was Fabricius. 
The dishonour and humiliation of Rome had 
lowered the already ebbing tide of life. His gaze 
had always been one of wistful yearning towards 
the past ; but towards the close he learned to see 
that the past lives on in the heavenly future. 

After his death the palace on the Aventine 
became simply a group of homes for the suffering 
and the destitute. And so by a natural Divine 
classification, not of like with like, but with unlike, 
Damaris gathered around her all kinds of suffering 
and need, the various needs supplying and helping 
each other : the aged watching the tottering steps 
of the young ; the little ones gladdening the sick 
and aged ; each learning to feel that they had some 
gift to spare as well as some need to be supplied. 
And thus with Damaris old age was not a fading, 
but a ripening into the fuller life. One day she 
said to Ethne, when some fresh sign of weakness 
had grieved the daughter’s heart, as with a foresight 
of the close — 

“ Thou who lovest to dwell among thy fountains 


312 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

surely wilt not grudge me to the land of the 
fountains of living waters ! For what are thy 
fountains after all, thy ‘ fountain of heavenly blue’ 
and thy Aqua Claudia, but aqueducts, though 
indeed aqueducts chiselled by Divine hands ? 
Whence do they come, the ever-flowing, exhaust- 
less springs of thy hills ? ” 

And Ethne said, with the far-off look in her 
eyes — 

Truly the clouds, mother, are ever feeding the 
springs, and the clouds drink of the seas ; the 
smallest spring which is perennial must indeed 
have its source in the infinite and the eternal.” 

Damaris took her hands and laid them on her 
own heart. 

‘‘ Higher than our highest hills,” she said, we 
must go for our fountains.” 

“ But,” said Ethne, does not the Christ, did not 
our Leo, speak of a well of living water springing 
up within us, here and now } ” 

Surely He does,” Damaris replied. “ And if He 
leads me by His fountains above, I shall know that 
He, the Source of all the fountains, is with thee 
here. I am leaving thee in no parched desert land. 
How else could there be ‘ no hunger nor thirst ’ for 
me^ there .^” 

‘‘But the City of God,” Ethne resumed, with 
tearful pleading, “is building also on earth; thou 
wilt not leave us too soon for the one above ? 
Hast thou not said that our Rome is a city not 
only of the fonntams^ but of the steps ? Stay with 
us ! stay with us yet a little while, and help our 
feebler feet to climb.” 


ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS. 313 

And Damaris did stay yet a little while. But 
at last the last step for her was reached, the 
step over the invisible threshold — and she entered 
into light; but she did not leave them in dark- 
ness, for as she entered, the light shone through 
on them. 

“ Death,” she had been wont to say, “ does not 
close the door of the unseen for us. Death is 
always keeping it open, both for those he takes 
and for those he leaves behind.” And when she 
died they found it true. 

As the years went on, glad tidings came from 
Ireland of more ground conquered, more souls won 
for Christ. 

A beautiful story came of another captive and 
slave, the maiden Brigit, set free to liberate the 
hearts of thousands ; and from Brigit’s large Irish 
heart came another hymn, to take its place on 
Ethne’s heart with Patrick's breastplate— 

“ I would a lake of hydromel for the King of kings ; 

I would that all the people of heaven should drink of it for 
ever ; 

I would the viands of faith and piety, and also .instruments 
of penitence in my house ; 

I would great cups of charity to distribute ; 

I would cellars full of graces for my companions ; 

I would that joy should be given at the banquet ; 

I would that Jesus — Jesus Himself — should reign over it ; 

I would that the three Maries of illustrious memory. 

And that all the spirits should be gathered from all parts ; 

I would be the steward of the Lord, 

And- at the cost of a thousand sufferings receive His 
blessing ; 

I would a lake of hydromel for the King of kings.” 

‘‘ The fountain indeed rises and rises in thy 
Ireland,” Marius would say ; it is becoming a lake. 


314 ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. 

a sea, the source of how many fountains who can 
say ? 

And Ethne — “ How can we ever foresee where 
the new fountains will spring up ? 

No more,” he replied, “ than I could foresee 
t/ieeJ* 

They did not indeed live to see how high 
the fountains would rise, or how far they would 
flow. They did not live to hear the great procla- 
mation of freedom go forth from the lips of the 
great Leo’s successor, the great Gregory, at the 
manumission of his own slaves, basing the freedom 
of all men on the creation of man in the image of 
God, and the Incarnation of the Son in the form of 
man. They did not indeed live to see the living 
waters from the two fountains flow forth throughout 
Western Christendom till they met in our English 
land, from the great missions of the Benedictines 
and of the monks of Iona ; the era of the great 
monks and abbots succeeding the era of the 
great bishops. But they saw their Paul enter the 
white-robed company of their young kinsman 
Benedict on Monte Cassino ; and they gave their 
John to join the first-born of Baithene in the great 
Irish monastery, which nurtured and sent forth 
Columba. And day by day they and their 
children pressed onward, in the city, in the solitude, 
in the home, armed with the breastplate of Patrick’s 
hymn — 


“ Christ before us, 
Christ behind us ; 
Christ around us, 
Christ within us,” 


ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS. 


31S 


and strong in the strength of Leo's faith. 
though He has committed His sheep to the care of 
many shepherds^ Christ Himself has never left the 
guardianship of His beloved flockP 
For 

“God fulfils Himself in many ways.” 

“IPSE TAMEN DILECTI GREGIS 
CUSTODIAM NON RELIQUIT." 


THE END. 


Richard Clay <2r* Sons^ Limited^ London <5r» Bungay, 



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